It’s not that meritory to be a runner up in Copa America. You beat Jamaica, Paragay and Colombia and you’re a finalist. It was more embarassing to lose to Chile really.
Argentina NT
- Thread starter Infordin
- Start date
I'm not saying you are overreacting. It's not a bad idea if you ask me.
The problem is Sampaoli only just said this was Messi's team. "Messi is the best. Everything will revolve around Messi"...
Then after a friendly 6-1 defeat Messi took no part in you expect him to go and say "Ok Lio, move over to the right wing in a lesser role, we need to fit Dybala".
That would be the definition of overreacting.
I totally agree this and well put chief.
I agree. They don't have that talented a squad either. As you correctly state, most of their talent is focused in one or two areas of the pitch. It's like England's 'golden generation' with their systemic/team issues, but minus the availability of household names all over the pitch.
Midfield (and possibly lack of great fullbacks) appears to be their biggest issue. That midfield is unlikely to win you the world cup. How can't they find better CMs than Biglia and Mascherano?
Thanks CZ
Yeah their middle and defensive thirds of their team isn’t all that great.
Romero
Mercado-----Otamendi------Fazio/Funes Mori--------Tagliafico
Biglia------------Paredes-------------Dive Maria---------Lanzini/Dybala
Messi---------------Aguero/Icardi/Pipa
Is not that bad but you need Simeone
Mercado-----Otamendi------Fazio/Funes Mori--------Tagliafico
Biglia------------Paredes-------------Dive Maria---------Lanzini/Dybala
Messi---------------Aguero/Icardi/Pipa
Is not that bad but you need Simeone
We need to make a new buyout clause, which is 12M dollars ATM
He's great on the left side, in the middle, and on the right side lol.
What the hell is that Pocho. Whats up with that midfield? LOL
-------------------Romero/Armani/Caballero--------------
Mercado/Bustos---Otamendi/A Franco---Fazio/Funes Mori----Tagliafico
----------Biglia/Banega--------Kranevitter/Ascacibar------------
Messi/Dybala-----------Meza/Lanzini----------------------Acuña/Di Maria
-------------------Aguero/Lautaro/Icardi--------------------------------
Depending on how much offensive we need to be, Bustos would play since Mercado is horrible attacking. The same goes for Acuña, who would play if we need more defense helping Taglia.
Why? Chile were/are an excellent side. Sanchez, Vidal, Aranguiz, Medel and Bravo would all walk into the Argentina side. Plus in one of the finals they had home advantage.
I wouldn't call it embarrassing at all.
It's Chile (read that same as you would read -or used to read- "It's Spurs").
They say it because Chile has never won anything
It’s pretty funny to lose to Chile twice, but Brazil almost went out to them in 2014.
Portugal lost to them as well in penalties, they had a poor qualifying but they’ve won back to back copa’s, they were a very good team, no shame in losing to them.
they didn´t score even once in both of those finals against Argentina.
And Germany needed extra time to score against Argentina and neither did Belgium or the Netherlands. Argentina had one of the greatest defenders in the world at the time.
Chile even took Brazil to penalties and Portugal struggled heavily against them as well.
No shame in losing to Chile, Higuain bottled it and Argentina should have done much better in penalties.
You are missing the point.
It would be a bit like Portugal being perennial final losers and then beating Spain in back to back finals.
Not even that. The only countries never to have won the Copa were Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela. Even Bolivia had won it.
It was a great stat to take the piss out of your noisy neighbours (they've always been noisy despite winning nothing, much like the Mexicans). 14-times winner Argentina put an end to that, twice over.
Get it?
But this was arguably the greatest era Chile had in their history. I understand there is a rivalry but it wasn’t like Argentina was up 3-0 in both finals and blew it.
The finals losses were tough but Chile are damn good team. It was only up until the recent WC qualifiers that they came crashing back down to earth.
If Argentina had lost to modern Bolivia or Peru in the final I’d understand, but Chile became a top ten team in the world and even beat the reigning Euro champs as well. How poor they were prior to the 2015 copa is irrelevant, they won both copa’s, took a healthy Brazil team to penalties and beat Portugal in their most recent matchup. It wasn’t like Chile were a Leicester City, they had a damn good squad did so for several years and became top ten in the world.
I think it was more the system than the defenders, DeMichelis, Basanta, Garay, etc weren´t that good.
I thought Garay, Mscherano and Rojo had a pretty solid run, but Garay inexplicably hasn't been called back up and Masche and Rojo look finished.
Yadda yadda.
It's Chile. They are always in the midst of a false dawn, the Argies turned it into a reality. It's on them.
Garay was called but he said no, maybe he saw this coming
Issue with that is where would you play the back 4? Parking it on the halfway line is asking for trouble as Fazio is pretty slow, same for Taglia.
Is their a law Biglia has to play every single time? I'm amazed he's still start, thought Sampaoli would've bombed him out but clearly not given the poor season he's had for Meelan.
It was weird/funny that Thiago, Costa and Rodrigo all scored yesterday. They are more Brazilian than Açaí (Thiago maybe a bit less). It also gets me a bit mad, because Spain has so much talent, they didn't need to force the issue with naturalizing guys like Senna, Donato and those 3. I know people are going to say "well we have immigrants so blablabla". It's different to a guy that was born in the country because the family had to move there to survive than a guy that went there to play football in the first place, (or son of a pro footballer who happens to be there).
Didn’t Garay retire from the national team?
Brazil should've just called Diego Costa up more. I know he loves Spain but he surely wouldn't have declared for them if Brazil had show more faith.
Instead Big Phil had his man crush on Fred and had Jo as back up for 2013 Confed cup (Fred was actually o.k in that competition) and that confirmed things for the world cup which was obviously a big mistake.
Now that you brought it up do you have any good young CBs that want to visit Europe? We're really needing a new Pepe.
Aren't you guys going to naturalize Felipe mortal kombat? Or was it Maicon?
I don’t really fault Scolari for the Costa. I think he got hot the season after the Confederations Cup so we couldn’t cap-tie him then. Plus, we were hosting so we played nothing but friendlies and those don’t cap-tie players anymore which is bs IMO.
Thiago we lose because of his dad and his beef with the CBF.
Jardel and Maicon
I liked Felipe at Corinthians. He can jump high.Jardel and Maicon
He's been very good for Porto, if they win the league he'll be a big reason why
At last, a pundit on ESPN who is not overreacting, and the others make fun of him. 
He has a point though. Spain’s players have been playing together forever, and apart from Busquets over Koke, they were playing their entire first team.
Argentina had a bunch of young players on the field. Tagliafico, Bustos, Lo Celso, Meza don’t even have 10 caps between them. Messi, Aguero, Di Maria and Fazio were all on the bench.
6-1 looks like an ugly result even in a friendly, but these things have to be taken into consideration.
He has a point though. Spain’s players have been playing together forever, and apart from Busquets over Koke, they were playing their entire first team.
Argentina had a bunch of young players on the field. Tagliafico, Bustos, Lo Celso, Meza don’t even have 10 caps between them. Messi, Aguero, Di Maria and Fazio were all on the bench.
6-1 looks like an ugly result even in a friendly, but these things have to be taken into consideration.
ESPN FC is an entertaining show for me but majority of those guys are idiots.
I don't know why Dybala and Messi can't play together. Dybala is more of a striker than Messi who is basically playing as "playmaker" in the last years.
Why they are not calling Walter Kannemann?
Think their midfield really hurts them. No legs in there, no brain, no physical presence. Their offense is fine to a degree, even defensively they can defend at times and they rarely had top class CBs, but their midfield to me is a complete shambles. So low on quality compared to what Argentina used to have and compared to the top NTs.
Wouldn't last 45 mins at a WC with his thuggish style of defending. Ok, that may be inductive reasoning gone to far, since I've only seen him play once v. Real Madrid in the final of the Club World Cup in Marocco IIRC, where he mainly focused on kicking opponents. Crazy that he didn't get sent off then. Is he any better now?
Brazil have been playing a midfield of casemiro-paulinho-renato augusto...
Spain's best striker is Iago Aspas
Germany are well rounded but not really amazing anywhere
Personnell is not argentina's problem
Who is Argentina's Casemiro quality midfielder?