I thought that he might be talking about roles, yet I've mentioned that Diego wasn't the most accurate example because already in those years he played with a lot of sense and involving his mates, even in numbers he always had to the very least 10 assists per year.
The thing with him it's that his scoring ability was more a consecuence of his natural ability than role, because even more focused as forward, winger, he always droped deep since day one involving others and distributing.
Side note: people never talks about his injuries, specially the one in Barca, that was a huge issue in his life on every sense, winning major stuff after it doesn't give the real sense of how bad that injury was and how he changed after it, in and outside the pitch.
Yeah there is a lot of talk about some "out of football" reasons why Menotti didn't call them, but I preffer to avoid such view and just focus in this case that even for whatever reason he wasn't called, Diego in football terms was already ready to be part of that NT in whatever role and importance Cesar would like to assign him.
PD: Ranting a bit...
I always thought of Alfredo, Pele, Zico, Diego and Messi as wild cards Geniuses, their role is to be them.
From periods they'll do a more fixated one, due to what the team needs, the coach asks, their age, the size of the club that sometimes you have to play whatever space it's somehow free, etc and in the long term of their carreers some role might prevail. But at the end of the day, these players played of themsevels since day one and specially in their mature versions.
Doing an imaginary exercise related to their best traits, I always thought that even as wild cards, all around players, Pele for me is a perfect Forward, Diego the perfect winger and Messi the perfect direct and dinamic enganche/mediapunta with zillions of goals in him (a different sort of 10 than a Zidane, Riquelme or even Diego in such role). With Diego would be a crime to use him only in such way, but he had everything to the max to be an off the charts winger and due to Barca using Messi on a flank many people might end thinking of him better suit for such role than Diego.
A lot of people are acting like clowns at 17, without having the world at their feet as well
