After being confirmed from Portugal that Porto will not give up Varela for the Olympic event, Argentine coach Javier Mascherano began looking for a replacement who could fill the role he had planned for the former Boca midfielder, and he ended up finding one.
Who will go to the French capital instead of Isidro Casanova’s native will be Santiago Hezzewith past in Hurricane and currently in Olympiakosa team from the First Division of Greece, who will not have any type of impediment from the institution where he arrived in August 2023.
Hezze has just had a very good season in Greece, he became champion of the Conference League with Olympiacos and was among Mascherano’s squad for these last friendly matches against Paraguay.
His good performances even linked him with a possible summons to the Polish national team (he has nationality) for the Europe match being held in Germany.
Varela’s absence
Everything indicated that Alan Varela was going to be present at the Olympic Games since he was part of the recent preparation in the country and was even a starter in the two friendly matches that the Argentine National Team played against Paraguay.
The reason for his absence was because Porto has a new president (André Villas-Boas) and the current leadership decided not to give the former Boca player permission to be at the Paris event, which will have Argentina’s debut on July 24 against Morocco.
It should be noted that since it is not an official tournament clubs are not obliged to release their playersso Mascherano will have to be attentive until the last moment to give the final list of 18 players.
Preliminary list
The final 18, with four in reserve, would come from this roster:
Archers: Draw Martínez or Gerónimo Rulli, Leandro Brey and Fabricio Iacovich.
Defenders: Joaquín García, Gonzalo Luján, Nicolás Otamendi, Kevin Lomónaco, Marco Di Césare, Lucas Esquivel and Valentín Barco.
Frills: Cristian Medina, Equi Fernández, Claudio Echeverri, Kevin Zenón, Juan Nardoni, Thiago Almada and Santiago Hezze.
Fronts: Julián Alvarez, Lucas Beltrán, Pablo Solari, Luciano Gondou, Giuliano Simeone and Santiago Castro.
The rivals of the Sub 20 in the Olympic Games will be: Morocco (24/7), Iraq (27/7) and Ukraine (30/7).
Source: Ambito
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