Alejo Véliz of the Argentina U20 team: “Thank God we got the win”

By
Roy Nemer
-
13

Alejo Véliz scored the Argentina U20 team’s first goal at the 2023 U20 World Cup and he spoke about the win against Uzbekistan.

Véliz scored Argentina’s first goal which drew level against Uzbeksitan and the number nine spoke to the media after the win. Here is what he had to say:

“We had to start off on the right foot and thank God we got the win. We knew it was going to be difficult but luckily we were knew how to handle the match in the best way.

“It was very nice to see every one in the stadium. Javier (Mascherano) told us that we have to take advantage of all of this. A very nice group has been put together and we are enjoying it to the fullest.”

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13 Comments

  1. Alvarez just scored a typical no-9 goal! He is proving too good to be a second fiddle and a backup to Haaland who without Pep’s midfield will drop back to his Dortmund numbers!! He reminds me of Icardi , scores a ton when he is the main-man like in Galatasaray right now.

    • Unfortunately Pep will not drop Haaland considering what they paid for him and the numbers he’s put up and dropping pretty boy won’t be easy since he’s a Redcoat.
      Alvarez is doing exactly what he needs to do to be noticed and boy, he is NOTICED.

  2. Great crowd turnout but weather (and Argentina performance) kept them quiet.
    Uzbek dominated tactically but thankfully we got the win. Some kids looked promising but a lot of them mediocre at best. Why Soule on the left and Aguirre on the right while they play opposite sides for their clubs.

    • Out of all the youth titles Argentina won, I’d say the Olympics 2008 was win by pure squad talent, not because of Batista managing, so yea its possible to win it without good manager at youth level.
      However, that 2008 squad includes, Messi, Aguero, ADM, Riquelme ,Masche , Lavezzi etc, that’s basically a World cup finalist level squad lol

  4. An unimpressive victory against a weak team. The team looked very disjoint. The second goal was of brilliance. Mascherano is not getting things right. When he wanted, he should have been let be gone.

    • Was it unimpressive? Yes, definitely. But is Uzbek weak? No, far from it. In youth football, we need to stay away from calling team “weak” if they are not the typical “big teams” when it comes to senior NT as those two are completely different.
      The truth is Uzbek, in term of youth team, are one of the best in Asia for several years now. They qualified for the U20 WC as the champion of Asia (and don’t forget the last runner-up of the U20 WC is South Korea from the same continent). For most of Asia teams, their lack of individual quality are more than made up by their disciplines of the tactics and team cohesion. You can see that Uzbek are very organized in defence and quick on the counter. And for international football, when teams don’t have months to train, it’s very difficult to consistently beat this kind of team.
      Of course, this doesn’t excuse the terrible midfield (aside from Carboni) and the error-prone defense, which is why I still agree that our performance was mediocre at best. But we certainly have some players with decent potentials and abilities (Barco, Giay, Carboni, Aguirre, Veliz). With the home advantage, I think we can reasonably expect the team to make it out of the group stage. Anything more than that is a bonus.

    • True but remember at youth level, sometimes talents can saves terrible managing. Batista was never good manager, but our squad at Olympics 2008 was so stack that we beat everyone including Brazil & Netherlands.

      Also, the previous winner is Ukraine, not Brazil , Germany, France or Spain.

  5. Barco, Aguirre look like decent players. I don’t know but Carboni stands around a lot. Mascherano, what can I say. The guy at least tried to quit. Keeping him was a giant mistake. I am fairly sure that Placenta’s under 17 team would beat the living crap out of Mascherano’s U20 team.

    • Amiguismo….

      The coaching in this category has been deficient since 2009. We’re in 2023 and it seems AFA havent found a good dynamic with the sub-20 category.

    • Stop comparing youth teams to senior level, Asian teams are actually solid, Uzbekistan is very good and they’re Asian champions. Hopefully Argentina can improve with time, 1st match can be very complicated.

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