Reduce the margin of error

It is almost a game of chess before, a race of minds that are assisted by assistants, alternate coaches and video analysts. Those who resist this evolution of the game usually put forward obvious arguments: “The players are not robots (oh!) and a dribble ends with any previous calculation, you cannot know before (ahah!)”

What the coaches do with all this prior analysis, with the video analyst giving the footballers flash drives so that they know details about the area of ​​the field in which they are going to play or certain weaknesses that the rival player may have, is to reduce the margin of mistake or at least try. It is obvious that there are situations that cannot be foreseen.

lionel scaloni know, for example, that Poland He throws the ball up because he has full-backs (especially the right, Matty Cash) that go up and feed the ball with the air. robert lewandovski. So, his biggest concern is to think and study how to prevent this movement of the rival. Will you be assured of 100 percent effectiveness? It is not impossible.

Lewandovski He is one of the best strikers in the world and, even if you give him a personal or zone mark or whatever, as soon as he has one it will be a goal or he will be close. There is no total solution in football. But there are forecasts that the coach is obliged to have. scaloni cannot and should not fail to anticipate that the greatest virtue of Poland is the game from above.

Nor can it be indistinct to him that the rival presents one or two center forwards, as he has done many times and that is why his musings are between putting two (Otamendi – Romero/Lisandro Martínez) or three (Cuti – Otamendi – Lisandro) central defenderskeep a Guido Rodriguez because he is 1.85 meters tall despite the wonderful irruption of Enzo Fernández, putting Tagliafico for Acuña and even thinking of Foyth’s 1.88 meter to give him the right side.

The act of worrying Poland It does not prevent worrying about Argentina, of course. until Messi He scored the relief goal Argentina It was a continuity of the 50 minutes after the second goal of Saudi Arabia. The ball did not flow smoothly, the movement of putting guido rodriguez between the central defenders, he moved the central midfielder away from the gestation area and, in turn, this forced Mac Allister to be delayed more than necessary. The second half was more favored by the delay due to fatigue of Mexico that by Argentine merit. Messi’s goal got us out of the hole.

And on this, another doubt of Scaloni is based. Puts to guido rodriguez to take care of the Polish giants or ride the wave of Enzo Fernandez to have the ball longer and attack starting from higher areas, even at the risk of jumping lines and a Polish counterattack? are you still with Lautaro Martinezwho did not score goals and has a complicated ankle or gives the chance to Julian Alvarez? Di Maria, Messi, Otamendi and De Paul They don’t touch each other, we’ve always known that.

Everything is to be resolved. scaloni you do well to take your time to evaluate your own and strangers. You will never avoid the imponderables precisely because they are that, but it is essential to reduce the margin of error. If the rival has certain virtues, you have to try to neutralize them. And his Argentina It has qualities and footballers that can accentuate them, so you have to put them in and make them work correctly.

It seems simple, but it is not. At this point, we thought to take care of players for the round of 16 and yet the float turned into a pumpkin in the first game. From then on, everything was a dangerous swamp from which, for now, we emerged unscathed because Messi made magic. Now we have to win again to affirm the good countenance and follow the world just as we had imagined.