The Cuadrado-Teo swap was curious - but lets be fair there - after the subs for Teo and Chara we had 3 or 4 great opportunities on goal - we are just totally inefficient on the break (what would Germany do on this circumstances?) and THAT is where the coaching is worrisome to me. The biggest issue for me was that Fabra and Arias started getting lost up field and it caused our midfield to abdicate control to help compensate back in the final minutes. For example, Fabra is still ripping grass out of the field on one side of the field while Paraguay comes back and scores the second goal, right?
The chances started coming with Chara on the pitch...when Teo came on we lost possession for a bit. As for Fabra and Arias, I feel that deficiency is one of the main reasons we play with 3 attacking midfielders instead of 2 strikers these days. Someone mentioned how, at one point, we had Cardona, Falcao, Teo, James as our front 4 and how that was probably the slowest group we've ever fielded. Obviously, we used to do the same exact thing, to much success, with Macnelly in place of Cardona (Cardona's an upgrade). What allowed that to work was a pair of laterales who could overlap our attackers but be depended on to get back in time. Now, we have Cardona in a position that doesn't bring out his best just so we can have another guy to hold down Fabra's flank. The problem is we end up a little more secure at the cost of stranding Falcao. He didn't have a single clean opportunity until Chara came in against a stretched out opponent just like Cuadrado used to in 2012-13. Teo's presence didn't help a thing because those two need to be on the pitch long enough to outsmart the defense. But, that would mean sacrificing a winger, which could easily result in what we saw in the last 10 minutes against Paraguay and all the other matches that make us very skeptical about playing Fabra in the first place.