Lionel Messi gave a message to Argentina national team fans before the World Cup.
Messi scored for Argentina in their 3-0 win against Iceland and spoke to the media after the match. The 38 year old gave a message to the Argentina national team after their 2-1 loss against Saudia Arabia at the 2022 World Cup but gave a message to the fans after the match against Iceland. Speaking to the media, here is what he had to say:
“We are really excited. At the time, I said that this group wouldn’t let them down and we showed that, competing no matter the opponent or the competition. And we keep proving that with the same excitement and the same drive to want to compete.
“It’s a very winning group that always wants more. We will go step by step as always but with a lot of drive, excitement and convinced of what we are capable of.
“We are going to try. Let people have no doubts that we are going to give everything just like we have been doing all of this time. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. We were lucky to have positive results in recent years and that’s hard. But we got used to that and we got the people used to that. And we are going to try to repeat it.
“After that, it might happen or not, that’s football. But have no doubts that it’s going to be hard for opponents to beat us because it’s a very competitive national team.”
Key takeaway from the Iceland match.
Iceland played way better than what their FIFA ranking suggests. They were physically tough. They created three easy chances all of which should have been converted, specially the first one.
Our team did good for the first fifteen minutes and then the entire second half.
Somehow, after our first goal, we lost the midfield creativity. The combination of Barco, Paz, Palacios was not working out.
Overall players like Barco, Paz, Otamendi, Lisandro, Lautaro, Enzo and, of course, Messi put up an entertaining show.
Medina is not Tagliafico. He was caught napping on 3 occasions.
Augustin was good but the first Iceland chance, which is still a puzzle how they could miss, happened because he let the wing play happen instead of an aggressive defence. Anyway, he would not be in the team. Montiel is back for his stubborn shows in big matches. But is he still that effective after 4 years?
Bro the ever asking question of Argentinee full backs will be answered in the very first game when we will have fast quick african wingers of Algeria. It will be a real test.
Very true. But in a 4-4-2 model, Algerian wing movements should be handled in switching between 5-3-2 and 4-4-2. Not sure if Scaloni has a plan in place. Last year he was taken by surprise by the ultra-risky, perfectly synchronized high defensive line strategy of the Al-Suqour Al-Arabiyyah team and we lost. This time we are in a real tough group compared to the group we had last time.
Good assessment Mario.
I’m very familiar with Algeria team as I have followed them for ages. They have wingbacks this year that like to cut inside and take shots and make runs to confuse defenses organization. They are not as fast as a team such as western African teams but they are technical and have a very experienced coach this time around.
As for our friendly last night I believe the first chance for Iceland was called offside even if they scored. I watched on Tellefe last night and they called offside. But your point is taken and correct.
I also am not convinced with Medina yet, and thankfully Taglia is still healthy, but the opposite side should go to the faster molina as opposed to monti.
Finally, the midfield fell apart after the cooling break. I was impressed with barco even during this time. I know my comment will get butchered here, but LoCelso hopefully will not get many minutes this cup. It was a blessing he was injured for Qatar. We have too many class midfielders for him to be included.