Pereyra isn't international class. He should be nowhere near a team of Argentina's pedigree. Unfortunately our expectations have fallen so much we regularly see far worse players than Pereyra representing us. He's an average player. He cannot consistently maintain a high level of performance. It is beyond him. The team for tonight is better than the one on Saturday, obviously, but it's still deeply flawed. Forget the players a moment, the formation is all wrong. It's a 442, with Pereyra and De Paul on the flanks. That leaves our two central midfielders horribly exposed. Paredes and Lo Celso are good technical players with different qualities, I'm happy to see them both play, but they need to play in a 3, otherwise, against a good side, they will be overrun. If you're overrun in midfield you lose the game, more often than not. Casco is just another bang average player. I welcome the fact Scaloni has dropped the four players he has, but really we should have better replacements than Pereyra and Casco, and we should be playing 433, or 4231. I think Lanzini would be a better option than Pereyra on the right hand side. I have no idea how Meza is doing. Does anyone know? Against Paraguay we may get away with it and this will probably convince Scaloni to persist with it, but 2 players in central midfield is asking for trouble. Ideally you'd have another more powerful, more athletic and aggressive player in there with them, but somebody with a lot more quality than Pizarro or Rodriguez. It's basically the same formation as Saturday, and it didn't work then, and we were unable to keep the ball, except for a brief period. 3 players in the middle of the park also helps you in terms of possession. Palacios was a big loss but whether he would have played is another matter.
lol RG on cue to trash our team. You can be sure he celebrated both of Colombia's goals. Notice how he doesn't criticize Armani and defends Higuaín. Di Maria only being good in 5% of matches? What a joke..he's been our 2nd or 3rd best player during the past 10 years. I put Mesi as first and maybe Mascherano at 2nd. Those past 10 years gave us no trophies but it was hardly our worst given we got to 3 finals and has our best qualifying campaign ever (during which Di María was fantastic). Gaucho, did you ever consider that it's hard to win one of these? Why do you think we are entitled to it?
Agüero and Messi has always been bad not just for defensive reasons. Di Maria, Higuain, Messi worked well. I'm happy to see Lautaro even though he's no Agüero on an individual level..
Please don't start experimenting with players out of position in big matches. We always get tempted to do this.
More stupidity. Some of those trainers had good records and were worthy picks. After the fact you come in and criticize everyone except for River players and trainers. Never do you present a concrete alternative. Maradona was the worst cause we had the very best personnel that year...the Inter core, Messi at his peak, Masch at his peak, etc
Unfortunately Pereyra and Casco *are* about the best we have for those positions. Pedigree doesn't mean we are entitled to great players; we have to actually produce them which we do not anymore(especially defensive ones).
Good movement and energy for the first ten or so minutes but now...Not a lot of imagination and the energy has kinda chilled out.
If I learned one thing about the NT over the past 13 years is that Riquelme was an amazing midfielder.