An unexpected blow to illusion

Against Saudi Arabia, it was a team lacking in playing volume, innocent enough to fall into the rival’s approach, without offensive power, with players who were not at their level and with defensive errors that ended up paying for with goals. For all this, the 2-1 loss against the Arabs in their debut can be considered one of their worst defeats in the history of the FIFA World Cup.

What a priori was a party, ended up being a wake, because the current champion of America took the lead with a Lionel Messi penalty after 10 minutes of play, but conceded two goals at the start of the second half, signed by Saleh Al Shehri and Salem Al Dawsari, who sentenced the first bump of the competition.

With that defeat, Lionel Scaloni’s National Team was left with no margin of error to play the last two group games against Mexico, on Saturday the 26th, and Poland, on Wednesday the 30th.

The footballers of the national team, ten of them debutants in the highest FIFA competition, performed poorly collectively, combined with a worrying emotional response to straighten the course of the game, from which they left visibly beaten amid the stupor of thousands of Argentines present in Lusail.

Argentina took the lead after 10 minutes with a penalty facilitated by the arbitration group, which saw a subjective hold on Leandro Paredes on a stopped ball as a foul. The Dutchman Paulus Van Boekel called from the VAR, the Slovenian Slavko Vincic validated on the screen and Messi deceitfully billed the goalkeeper.

Once the score was unlocked, the intuition of a comfortable victory changed as Saudi Arabia showed signs of a concentrated, compact team, seasoned for the brand and infallible in the resource of the advanced position. In the first half alone, the “Halcones del Desierto” caused 7 offsides, three of them to invalidate plays that ended in goals from Messi and Lautaro Martínez (2).

The first success of the Asian team, protagonist of the greatest feat for Arab football, was the stifling pressure on the Argentine midfielders, which made both Leandro Paredes and Rodrigo De Paul uncomfortable for the short pass. Only “Papu” Gómez was able to leak some qualification but, for the rest, the Argentine resource was the long shipment so that Di María, Lautaro or Messi escaped from the last rival line, at times armed with six footballers. Beyond the advantage, the feeling left by the first half was not good and in the second part a terrifying start corroborated that the Qatari afternoon was heading to enter the black history of the Selected.

Due to a defensive inattention came the equality of Al Shehri, which a late cross by “Cuti” Romero could not avoid. That unleashed the worst minutes for Argentina in the game. The team entered a state of paralysis that was verified with the second goal a while later. Al Dawsari had time and space inside the area to spike the ball into the left corner of “Dibu” Martínez and unleash a hellish Arab climate in the stadium.

With more than half an hour ahead, Argentina was not able to prevent the sporting catastrophe, it was a team in a hurry, nervous and frustrated at every saving cross of a Saudi footballer.

Scaloni kicked the board with three simultaneous changes but the operation was the same. The Argentine party that marked the previous one was appeased because the National Team did not give positive signs to reach the goal, despite the enormous differences in hierarchy.

Now there is no margin for error, but there are players and a team so that the flame of illusion continues to burn to see La Scaloneta play the final in that same stadium on December 18