No West Ham fan forget Lionel Scaloni for all the wrong reasons.
The Hammers were just minutes away from FA Cup glory in 2006 against Liverpool when the right-back made a costly mistake that led to West Ham conceding and going on to lose the game on penalties.
Scaloni, 44, has put that final heartbreak behind him, managing Argentina and Lionel Messi to World Cup glory in Qatar.
Lionel Scaloni made an error that West Ham supporters cannot forgive but he has made new final history by winning the World Cup 2022.
The Argentine, who had only been at the club a matter of months arriving on loan from Deportivo La Coruna in January ’06, started for West Ham in the FA Cup final.
He was all set to be a hero, creating Alan Pardew’s team opening goal at the Millennium Stadium, putting a cross into the box that was deflected in off Jamie Carragher.
Dean Ashton and Paul Konchesky scored the other goals for West Ham as they led 3-2 in stoppage time, seconds from winning the cup, when disaster struck.
Djibril Cisse went down injured and Scaloni put the ball out of play. In sporting spirit, Liverpool gave it back to Scaloni who panicked booting the ball into the middle of the pitch. This handed possession back to the Reds and Steven Gerrard.
Liverpool engineered a cross that was cleared only for it to fall back at the feet of their captain who smacked it in from 35-yards.
It took the game to extra-time and there was no goals so penalties decided it. West Ham stars Bobby Zamora, Konchesky and Rio Ferdinand all missed their spot-kicks and the Irons lost.
The final goes down as one of the most exciting ever and has been nicknamed ‘the Gerrard final’ due to his brace in the match, iconic goal and lifting of the trophy.
Scaloni got a lot of the blame for the defeat and he left West Ham, not making his loan move permanent. His career, that saw him also play for Lazio, could’ve been tainted by that moment but he will now be remembered as the manager who won the Copa America and World Cup with Messi’s Argentina.
Scaloni got the better of France in a dramatic final and built his team around the 35-year-old legend.
His old West Ham boss, Pardew, has opened up on what Scaloni is like and his time at West Ham. He expressed that there was more to him than just that final clearance and his personality, also he opened up on his own feeling 16 years on.
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.”