West Ham flop to World Cup glory: The Lionel Scaloni story

Pardew said: “He cost me a Cup final winners’ medal and I can never forgive him.”

Speaking in despair he told The Telegraph: “It’s a moment of madness because there was a minute left and all we had to do is run the clock down. You don’t want the ball to end up centrally in the pitch at that time.

“It was at complete odds with a player who was ordinarily one of the most savvy in the team – he’d have been bottom of my list to do that. With some I’d have gone, ‘Well, what do you expect, you know?’ but here’s our most intelligent, sensible player.

“So many West Ham fans have come up to me over the years and said, ‘Oh my god, that throw in. What was he thinking?’

“All this time later and they still bring it up. If only he’d just done something different.

“I haven’t spoken to him since he became the Argentina manager but I’d love to meet up with him and I’d love to know if he’s ever referenced that moment with his players: what not to do when you’re winning with a minute to go. If he hasn’t I don’t rate him as a manager at all!

“I never saw Scaloni take a Marlon Harewood out and do a coaching session with him – he wasn’t that sort of type – but he absorbed everything and was intelligent. When I look back at the likes of [Graham] Potter [who he coached at Reading] and Scaloni, they were always listening and studying and that’s a very good trait of a manager. The concentration was always there.”

On Scaloni’s personality, Pardew said: “He wasn’t blessed with pace but he made up for that with his positional play and straight away it was clear he was a people’s person.

“He had the personality to adapt at West Ham, he absorbed everything and we could see he was not going to be phased. You need to embrace the culture when you come to a new country and explore and enjoy it and Scaloni was like that. He came to London and loved it. He was going to museums, I could hear him in the background talking about things he’d seen and visited, restaurants he’d been to.

“Knowing Scaloni’s character I think his personality will have been good for Argentina because it is a volatile place, it’s volatile football. I’ve been to games in Argentina and it’s chaos. But he’s a sensible person and I think that’s what they needed. He hasn’t tried to be flamboyant and he’s obviously organised the team very well around Messi.”