Argentina will play Cabo Verde in the Round of 32 at the World Cup.
The Argentina national team will finish first in Group J and they will play Cabo Verde who finished second in their group. Lionel Scaloni’s team won 3-0 against Algeria and 2-0 against Austria and they are on six points in their group.
Cabo Verde drew 0-0 against Spain, 2-2 against Uruguay and 0-0 against Saudi Arabia to finish second in their group with three points. Argentina will play Cabo Verde on July 3 in Miami, Florida.
The game is at hard rock stadium which is not air conditioned. Still hot and humid at 6 pm.
I live 4 hours from Argentina camp.
Tickets for quarterfinal in Kansas city is crazy. Does anyone know if one can go see them practice. I know teams are secretive about their training.
Thanks to the one and only, Bielsa! I still remember how his sheer stubbornness sent argentina crashing out of the 2002 world cup in the group stage like it was yesterday. That squad was, without a doubt, the strongest Argentina team I’ve ever seen heading into a Worldcup. every single position had a worldclass starter and an equally worldclass backup. Yet somehow, he still found a way to get us eliminated before the knockout rounds. An all time coaching disaster for the national team followed by spineless Pekermen. Anyways we’ve got a pretty comfortable path to the Round of 16 now but we should not underestimate any team!
There is no way Pekerman is your second biggest disaster when Sampaoli and Maradona exist. Trust me, Scaloni subbing off Di Maria for Acuna was even worse than Pekerman’s decision, but he got bailed out by Emi, which Pekerman didn’t
@ChrisBrown
After the disastrous 2010 and 2018 world Cup qualifying campaigns, expectations under Diego and Sampaoli were already low. But 2006 was a completely different story. Argentina were every bit as good as, if not better than, france and italy, and I genuinely believe we were the better team than Germany. We controlled and outplayed them for almost the entire match, only to let it slip away because of Pekermen’s poor and cowardly decision making. That’s what makes 2006 so heartbreaking.
@SulaV
I understand your reasoning, but for me, Scaloni subbing off Di Maria for Acuna will always be the biggest managerial blunder. The only difference is that we won the game. That final should never have become one of the greatest finals ever. For the first 70 minutes, it was one of the worst World Cup finals to watch, and then everything changed. Thanks, Scaloni, for the entertainment I never asked for, but he is my GOAT nonetheless.
Argentina also had a terrible habit of pushing or losing faith in managers out after just one failed tournament. Pekerman made a mistake, yes, but his overall work in 2006 was outstanding. Instead of letting him stay, learn from that mistake, and build toward the next World Cup, we lost faith. Constantly changing coaches after every disappointment wasted one of the greatest generations of Argentine talent.
Look at Germany and France. Low lost in 2008, 2010, 12 but Germany kept faith in him. He built an even stronger team and eventually won the 2014 World Cup. Deschamps lost the Euro 2016 , but France stuck with him, and he won the 2018 World Cup.
Now imagine Pekerman with the Inter treble winning trio, Ballon dor winner Messi ( much superior than 2006) , Riquelme, Inform Veron, Di Maria, Prime Tevez and Aguero. Argentina probably wouldve won the 2010 wc. Cause 2010 squad was far better than 2006.
We repeated the same mistake with Tata Martino after the 2016 Copa America. Yes, he failed to win back to back finals, but if we had shown patience and confidence, I believe Argentina would have been in much better shape heading into the 2018 World Cup. His team lost finals but never was incompetent.
We finally showed maturity by sticking with Scaloni after the 2019 Copa America instead of losing faith in him. The results speak for themselves. For nearly two decades, Argentina rarely gave promising managers enough time to continue their projects, and I believe that constant impatience was one of the biggest reasons we underachieved between 2000 and 2020.
You can trash Pekerman all you want, but you can’t deny he would’ve been a much better choice than Maradona to lead us in 2010.
2002 was a great team, but a sad tragedy. .. 2006 was also an amazing team, one of my favorite team up until 2019. I don’t blame pekerman. I blame our defense, ayala, coloccini, demechels… They were a disaster against Germany. Maybe pekerman made the wrong subs, but we can say that about 2010 when maradona never played milito.
Bielsa is too eccentric, his training sessions are too tough for these short tournaments and during game he wants a full press and then wonders why his players are exhausted. He just interviewed now in TyC and said the goalkeeper decided he wanted to come out after half, but valverde was his decision so that he can have two 9’s with more reach.
No balance El loco Bielsa
I’ll be honest—I was secretly hoping Saudi Arabia would beat Cape Verde so Argentina could get a shot at revenge for that shocking 2022 opener. But Cape Verde held them to a draw and earned their place instead. So now, the defending champions face a different kind of challenge.
On paper, Cape Verde looks like a “good draw”—a debutant nation with just 500,000 people. But don’t be fooled. Their biggest weapon is defensive resilience.
We saw it in 2022 against Saudi Arabia, in 2018 against Iceland, and even in recent qualifiers where compact defenses frustrated us. Cape Verde isn’t just any bus-parker-they’re elite at it. They held Spain to 0-0, drew Uruguay 2-2, and conceded only 1 shot on target across multiple stretches. Their discipline is almost robotic.
If Cape Verde can keep it 0-0 into the second half, the tension will rise, Messi will drop deeper, and the crowd will get anxious-exactly what they want. Their goalkeeper Vozinha is a wall, their defenders throw their bodies at everything, and they’re patient enough to wait 90 minutes for one counter-attacking chance.
But this time…our team is different from 2022. We’ve evolved…more calculated, more patient, and less reliant on desperate heroics. Scaloni has already shown he can adjust tactics—practicing a 3-5-2 formation, using Enzo’s long-range shooting, and relying on set-pieces to break low blocks.
I just hope Argentina plans well against them. No complacency. No frustration. Early goal, and the bus collapses.
Love from Nepal 🇳🇵🇦🇷