He Argentine U-23 soccer teamwith Javier Mascherano as a coach, will debut this Sunday against Paraguay in the match of the first date of the B Group of the South American Pre-Olympic Tournamentwhich is played In Venezuela and grants two places for the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
The meeting will take place in the Misael Delgado Sports Centerin the city of Valencia, 125 kilometers from Caracas, and televised exclusively by Dsports.
Argentina, two-time Olympic champion for the gold medals of Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, will try to achieve the sixth title in a Pre-Olympic after Peru 1960 and 1964, Colombia 1980 and 2020 and Chile 2004. Brazil is the top winner of the specialty with seven stars .
A demanding and exhausting tournament, with matches every three days, which will force the Argentine team to resort to the entire squad, which arrived in Venezuela with one less player than the 23 allowed by the sale of defender Julián Malatini to the German Werder Bremen.
The transfer of former Defensa y Justicia was made after the official list for the South American tournament was presented, the Bundesliga club refused to give him up and the AFA could not replace him since that possibility is only considered in case of injury.
Mascherano’s team is part of Group B with Paraguay, Peru, Chile and Uruguay, led by Marcelo Bielsa. Only the first two will advance to the final quadrangular, which will assign the two tickets to Paris for the champion and runner-up of the competition.
The situation in which Mascherano takes office is particular. The former captain of the world runner-up team in Brazil 2014 and two-time Olympic champion suffered two tough setbacks as coach of the U-20 team.
Argentina was left out of the South American final phase in Colombia 2023 but also entered the World Cup in the category when Argentina took over the venue instead of Indonesia. In the top competition, however, they did not make it past the round of 16 after losing to Nigeria in San Juan.
After these poor performances, the coach resigned from the position of youth coach, but at the request of Claudio Tapia (president of AFA), Lionel Scaloni (coach of the senior team) and Bernardo Romeo (coordinator of youth teams) he agreed to continue in the position. .
It is clear that the “Jefecito” stakes a lot of his future in this tournament since outside of Paris 2024, a competition that could include Lionel Messi and Ángel Di María as senior players on the squad, would be a very difficult blow to assimilate.
The Argentine team played many preparatory friendlies (Japan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Lanús, Central Córdoba de Santiago del Estero and Comunicaciones), it was taking shape and style and is made up of footballers from the local environment, with the exceptions of Athletico Paranaense defender Lucas Esquivel , the winger recently transferring to English Brighton Valentín Barco and the Atlanta United forward Thiago Almada, world champion in Qatar 2022.
The figures of the Sub 23 are Claudio “Diablito” Echeverri, who replaced the injured Pedro De la Vega, Almada, Barco, Nicolás Valentini, Federico Redondo and Luciano Gondou.
Paraguay, led by Carlos Jara Saguier, finished their preparation with a friendly that they lost to Uruguay 4-1 at the Maldonado Campus, but their history speaks of a football with great strength, physical opulence and good aerial play.
In the Guaraní team, midfielders Diego Gómez (Inter Miami of MLS), Enso González (English Wolverhampton) and three elements who play in Argentina stand out: Iván Leguizamón (San Lorenzo), Juan José Cardozo (Argentinos Juniors) and Marcelo Pérez (Huracán) .
Source: Ambito
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