Javier Mascherano has named his Argentina U20 team for the COTIF tournament.
Mascherano will be coaching in his second tournament in charge of the Argentina U20 national team. After finishing fifth in the Toulon tournament last month, he will now coach at the COTIF tournament in Spain.
With several of the European based players excluded for the COTIF tournament, Mascherano has still called up Nicolas Paz of Real Madrid, Rafael Pfauser of SC Freiburg and Alvaro Killane of U.D. Las Palmas. Here is the team which he has selected:
Roman Vega (Argentinos Juniors)
Lautaro Ovando (Argentinos Juniors)
Lautaro Di Lollo (Boca Juniors)
Nahuel Genez (Boca Juniors)
Valentin Barco (Boca Juniors)
Francisco Marco (Defensa y Justicia)
Lucas Roman (Ferro Carril Oeste)
Juan Gauto (Huracan)
Brian Aguilar (Lanus)
Agustin Rodriguez (Lanus)
Ulises Ciccioli (Rosario Central)
Brian Aguirre (Newell’s Old Boys)
Lautaro Lopez (Velez Sarsfield)
Alvaro Killane (U.D. Las Palmas, Spain)
Nicolas Paz (Real Madrid, Spain)
Rafael Pfauser (SC Freiburg, Germany)
Agustin Giay (San Lorenzo)
David Romero (Talleres de Cordoba)
Federico Gomes Gerth (Tigre)
Ignacio Maestro Puch (Atletico Tucuman)
Tomas Gonzalez (Union)
Mateo Seoane (Velez Sarsfield)
Argentina are in Group A along with Valencia, FC Rukh Ukraine and AD Alzira. Group B has Uruguay, Villarreal, UB Brasil and Levante. The tournament runs from Saturday, July 30 until Sunday, August 7. Here is the schedule:
Saturday, July 30: FC Rukh Ukraine vs. Argentina
Monday, August 1: Argentina vs. Valencia CF
Thursday, August 4: Argentina vs. UD Alzira
Friday, August 5:
The semi finals
Sunday, August 7:
The final
Di Maria had a good debut. Very lively. Italian serie A is good for him to improve his tactical aspect as Italian teams don’t give you too many open space unlike spanish la liga teams. Di Maria is a good player in open space, in Italy he will learn to play with not that many open space, which is good for him as many teams in the WC will play that way.
Also Di Maria position is very similar to Messi now, right winger who likes to cut inside. The good thing is that unlike Messi-Tevez or Messi-Dybala in the past. Messi and Di Maria do seem to have mutual understanding in Scaloni era. Our right side attack benefits greatly because of that and our attack from the right is the best in the world as a result.
The good thing about Messi and Di Maria is if Di Maria takes the right wing role during the game, Messi becomes the playmaker number 10 like Riquelme/Maradona. If Messi takes the right winger role, Di Maria becomes the number 10. That’s why these 2 work out really well. Not to mention that De Paul, our best midfielder is the center right midfielder too, and Molina the right back always helps by his positioning.
As I predicted the high profile names like Garnacho, Soule, Luka are not included. Masche still calls up a lot of ex Toulon players. Hope they will perform better this time. We need injections on CB, RB badly. LB we have a lot of talents. Now it is time for Barco to perform. I thought Paz was not bad at all in Toulon. I would like to see him more.
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