He called Lionel Scaloni, Pablo Aimar, Walter Samuel and Roberto Ayala to his room. “Let’s change the routine. The players won’t know the 11 in the pre-match speech until tomorrow.” Thus ‘Muñeco’ responded to a piece of advice from Gallardo. This had been on his mind for days. One day, River’s coach warned him: “If you want the group to bond together, don’t let the team play until the last moment. You’ll also save yourself from reading the 11 published in the press.” Match morning.” Argentina surprisingly lost to Saudi Arabia (1-2) and won agonizingly against Mexico (2-0) in a tension-filled match that wasn’t broken until an hour later. And then came the duel against Poland The coach told this to Messi, the captain and spiritual leader of the group, and the former Azulgrana supported him, thinking it was a good decision.
It wasn’t just any day. He gathered the players together and gave 11; The first featured De Paul, Enzo and Mac Allister in midfield, with Di María accompanying Messi and Julián Álvarez pushing hard from the bench. No media discovered Scaloni’s plan and it was the first match that Argentina won peacefully after Mac Allister and Julián Álvarez, the coach’s two big bets in the eleven, linked more than 800 passes and celebrated two goals.
The unexpected manager
Unexpected coach Scaloni suddenly found an ecosystem in which Lionel Messi would be comfortable. At the age of 36, Lionel spent 17 seasons wearing the albiceleste jacket, sometimes a straitjacket, sometimes a silk tunic. Crazy made his debut in the U-20 World Cup in 2004, when he failed to qualify for Spain, and made his debut with the senior team against Hungary in August 2005. He touched three balls, on the third he tackled Magyar Vilmos Vanczak, who caught him, and when he got rid of him, he hit him and saw red. A premonition of how difficult the road will be. But Leo never lost faith.
He scored his first World Cup goal in Germany in 2006. 2010 D10s and Prophet met in South Africa and called out to him Diego Armando Maradona. In 2014, Brazil became the first country to rekindle its expectation of becoming champions again by losing in the final against Germany, led by Alejandro Sabella, and scoring four goals. In Russia 2018, they had a turbulent World Cup due to Sampaoli’s tension and were eliminated in a crazy match (3-4) in the last 16 rounds.
Messi trusts Scaloni. He enjoys your closeness and your direct way of dealing with issues. Lionel, the son of Ángel Scaloni, who was ‘Chiche’ to everyone in Pujato, learned what he knew about football from his father, who trained the boys of the town. A winger or midfielder, the generous effort player came through Newell’s youth team before joining Estudiantes and arriving at Deportivo, where he became a legend in the A Coruña side. Scaloni, who knew the codes like few others, was always a practical and determined man in confronting problems and fixing them. he listened Carlo Ancelotti Admit to Jorge Valdano that his job consists “mainly of organizing the defense and unleashing the attack.” And Argentina, heading into the World Cup, put this into practice. He was missing Lo Celso, Nico González and Joaquín Correa due to injury. Lautaro Martínez arrived in Qatar fighting for goals and relieved ‘Cuti’ Romero and Paredes as the team did not progress in its natural flow after the first defeat. He played for Enzo Fernández, Mac Allister and Julián Álvarez, and at dusk Di María kept faith in him “because he was different, a complete player who stepped into both areas.”
Messi ‘maradonea’
The round of 16 against Australia was once again agonizing; In the last game, ‘Dibu’ Martínez’s stopper to Kuol made the goals of Messi and Álvarez beautiful (2-1). They suffered more against Van Gaal’s Netherlands, who Messi faced at the end of a hard-fought match. The Dutchman’s previous statements heated up the atmosphere and everything exploded in the 90th minute. Paredes made a harsh tackle on Aké and then threw a ball into the Dutch bench, sparking a fight. By then, the game was already out of control for Mateu Lahoz, who had been overacting.His disdain angered the Argentinians and oranges. The match ended in penalties as ‘Dibu’ emerged, starting to grow.
This reassuring victory epitomized what football means to Argentinians. It was the day that American journalist Grant Wahl’s heart failed, and the hypothesis spread quickly that he had been poisoned by the Organizing Committee for his liberal ideas and support of LGTBi groups. Wahl spent several months in Argentina, seen in football settings, while working on his final year thesis in Journalism at Princeton: ‘The impact of football on the lives of Argentinians’. Incomprehensible task. Van Gaal unknowingly lit the volcano that night, with 46 million Argentinians interpreting this victory as a sign.
Equidistant between Gongorian Menottism and Quevedo’s bilardism, Scaloni’s pragmatism united the group. “The important thing is to always know how to play the game. Football is one, football is this; When you have to put it, you put it. If you have to play nice, you play nice. And when you need to defend, you defend. There is not just one football, there is everything: knowing how to defend, knowing how to attack, knowing how to face what each game asks of you. “Even with players with good feet, if they need to make a difference, they can.”
In the semi-finals, Albiceleste dazzled the Croatians, whose midfield was Luka Modric. Defender Borna Sosa noted with amusement: “It’s safer to give them the ball than to keep your money in the bank.” Scaloni made another change by coming up against Di María and betting that fourth midfielder Paredes would face the Croatian midfield. The semi-final started “with fears of attrition in the Dutch game”. Doubts were confirmed at the most critical moment of the World Cup. In the 18th minute, Messi stopped, put his hand on the back of his left thigh, and an earthquake occurred in Argentina, from Jujuy to Ushuaia. He bent over to flex the muscles. He felt pain but didn’t even look at the bench. He stretched, gained time on each intercepted ball and readjusted to the game by activating his energy-saving mode. “We panicked for minutes because we didn’t know what had happened to him. He didn’t say anything, but it was obvious that something had happened to him. But he decided to continue and reassured everyone,” Scaloni admits.
After quarter of an hour Livakovic brought down Julián Álvarez and Messi picked up the ball to take the penalty. The man from Rosario pulled out a howitzer and exploded with joy, driving away the ghosts of the wound. Something confirmed when he returned normally from rest. With low pace but a leading role, Messi led the team in a duel in which Argentina frustrated the Croatians. And then it happened… In the 58th minute, Messi, who received a pass from the right wing followed by Gvardiol, braked when he reached the edge of the penalty area and stood with his back to the frame. He shook his body, pretending to start from the inside, a move the Croatian defender introduced him to. However, Messi then recovered and beat him to the baseline, reaching and overtaking him. Where Julián Álvarez scored. Messi ‘maradone’ Gvardiol and Argentina won enthusiastically (3-0) in their sixth final against France, Mbappé and Griezmann, to whom they owed revenge for the previous World Cup.
‘In the hands of Dibu
Father Francisco, the self-proclaimed ‘Crow’, told an old joke that says Argentinians overcome their egos and commit suicide by jumping into the void. So the name “Final of All Time” is far from grandiose, even lukewarm. Because it was also like that. The first half was very tense and Argentina wanted to push forward from the start, especially with Kylian Mbappé. ‘Dibu’ Martínez recalls: “I knew ‘Cuti’ Romero’s weakness. I remember in the first game Mbappé walked with both feet. He caught the ball and everything. At halftime I grabbed him by the shirt and said: ‘They’re going to throw you out and I’m going to destroy you after the game.’”
Scaloni surprised everyone once again by starting the eleven an hour before the France match. The media agreed: he would repeat the eleven after his display against Croatia… “TWe knew that Di María would play on the left wing, but we didn’t tell them until an hour ago. Today everything is currently known by a message, and this can be counterproductive. We did not give anyone an advantage. “What we wanted was to crouch when they got him and when we got him back, we were always on Di María’s side, so he could attack Koundé with everything, who was out of place in the side.” Scaloni appears months later.
The maneuver went so well The second goal was the play that Pujato’s man drew on the board an hour before the game and Di María reached the area to score. However, Mbappé, who turned 2-0 into 2-2 within two minutes, was not there. The first converted Otamendi’s naive penalty, the second with a cathedral volley (123 kilometers per hour) that became the most powerful shot of the tournament. Then the two greatest players of the World Cup, Messi and Mbappé, scored to leave the score at three. And the 123rd minute came and the game that left its mark on the tournament came. The French counter left Kolo Muani alone against ‘Dibu’ Martínez. The Frenchman chose to strike him hard and low, but the Argentinian goalkeeper stuck his left leg out as if it was a handball match and deflected the shot when the goal had already been scored. The best save in World Cup history, along with Gordon Banks’ miraculous save of Pelé’s shot. “I will think about this opportunity for the rest of my life. It will be a part of me. I must move on with my life. All forwards have missed opportunities in their lives. I can’t lower my head. I have to keep going like this and keep fighting,” declared Kolo Muani, who rose alongside Brazilian goalkeeper Barboza in the defeat to Uruguay at the Maracaná in the 50s.
Dibu then completed extending his legend in the penalty shootout and Argentina won the World Cup in the penalty shootout; here he avoided goals from Conan and Tchouaméni, while his teammates scored all the goals. Abiceleste were crowned world champions once again after 36 years, with Messi taking the baton of Maradona. Along with Lionel Sebastián Scaloni, Cesár Luis Menotti and Carlos Salvador Bilardo, he enters the Olympus of Argentine football. Who would tell this to Chiche’s son? Unexpected coach.