Argentine guardian Angel

Di Maria has combined well with Messi to mask the South Americans’ lack of penetrative powers .

Argentina has been disjointed at the World Cup, relying heavily on Lionel Messi for its goals and a couple of narrow escapes. Messi’s fellow forwards, Gonzalo Higuaín and Sergio Agüero, have fumbled, and after Agüero was injured, his replacement, Ezequiel Lavezzi, played poorly enough that he was substituted. But in recent days, it is not Messi who has monopolised the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, but rather the gaunt face of his midfield partner, Ángel di María.

“When Messi or di María gets hold of the ball, the panorama changes,” Diego Latorre wrote in a newspaper column criticising Argentina’s lack of collective strategy under coach Alejandro Sabella.

Di María, 26, was instrumental in Argentina’s final group match, a victory over Nigeria, but he became a national hero this week after scoring the late goal that beat Switzerland in the Round of 16. With only moments of extra time remaining, he galloped towards the edge of the area, received a pass from Messi and curled the ball into the bottom corner.

Messi and di María are from Rosario, home to Argentina’s most fervent fans and a breeding ground for soccer talent: Five players on Argentina’s roster were born there. Di María considers the city so important to his development that he tattooed a phrase of gratitude to its streets on his arm.

Growing up in Rosario, di María was hyperactive. To channel his energy, a doctor suggested to his mother, Diana Hernández, that he take up a sport. The family briefly considered karate, according to an interview Hernández gave to a Spanish newspaper. But in Rosario, there was really only one option.

“We preferred he play soccer,” Hernández said.

Youth coaches molded di María’s restlessness into a valuable attribute. He is a tireless runner, and Argentina’s quickest player. Di María ran with such vigour during a World Cup qualifying match last year against Bolivia — played in the thin air of La Paz, 12,000 feet above sea level — that he needed to be given oxygen from a small cylinder.

“It’s like he has four lungs, not two,” said Domingo Fleitas, 53, a street hawker in Buenos Aires who was selling plastic figurines of Argentina’s players. Fleitas had put posters of di María and Messi on the wall behind his makeshift stall.

“The only player that can relieve the pressure on Messi is di María,” Fleitas added.Di María quickly drew notice, and Rosario Central, one of the two big clubs in the city, signed him from a neighborhood team, El Torito. Central agreed to pay with 26 soccer balls for di María, who was 16 then, but according to lore the balls never arrived.

Youth system

As he progressed through the Central youth system, di María also helped his father, a coalman, at work. He would shovel coal into sacks, then travel to training, arriving with blackened hands, according to Marcelo Trivisonno, one of his youth coaches.

Di María did not astonish observers in the manner of Messi, a prodigy who left for Barcelona when he was 13, or Agüero, who debuted in Argentina’s first division when he was 15. Instead, at 16, di María was a substitute for Central’s youth team.“He wasn’t among the best players,” Trivisonno said in an interview.

But di María eventually earned a starting berth on the first team. Like most young talent in Argentina, he was briskly transferred to Europe. Di María signed with Benfica in Portugal when he was 19. He won a league title there, scored the winning goal for Argentina in the final of the Beijing Olympics, then moved to Real Madrid in 2010 in a transfer worth more than $30 million.

Last summer, when Real Madrid signed forward Gareth Bale — who, like di María, is left-footed — for a record fee of $132 million, it was widely expected that di María would be sold. But Carlo Ancelotti, the Real Madrid coach, liked what he saw in di María and found a way to accommodate him in central midfield.

The move was among the most important ones he made this season. Di María finished with 11 goals and 24 assists, and it was his penetrating run that led to Bale’s key goal in the Champions League final against Atlético Madrid. Di María was named the game’s most valuable player.

“I don’t feel inferior to anybody,” he said in a recent interview, when asked whether he felt inhibited by Bale and another teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo, who was voted the world’s best player in 2013.

Similarly, for Argentina, he might be considered the least fantastic of the “fantastic four” that also includes Messi, Agüero and Higuaín. But di María has excelled at the World Cup, where fans have chanted his nickname Fideo, which translates roughly as noodle, a reference to his lanky torso and lean face.

Some people predicted di María’s influential performances. On the eve of the World Cup, Horacio Pagani, a renowned sports journalist in Argentina, explored how the country might win its first World Cup since 1986.

“Argentina has Messi,” he wrote. “And it has di María.”