Paulo Dybala scored for AS Roma in their 2-2 draw against Borussia Dortmund.
Dybala had a goal for AS Roma in their pre-season friendly match draw. With the score at 0-0, the ball fell to the Argentine inside the penalty area and he scored from close range to give AS Roma the 1-0 lead.
It is time to acknowledge why Dybala was never given a fair chance in the national team.
It has nothing to do with position or style of play, because the same argument could be made against Di Maria. They can play at any of left, right and center. Great at both crossing and cutting inside. “Oh but he is too similar to the greatest player of all time” is the dumbest possible reason to exclude a player from the squad, never mind the final 11, in big tournaments.
The real reason is that Dybala humiliated Barcelona in the 2017 UCL quarterfinal. Scored a brace and got an assist for 3-0. He has been continuously overlooked since then. Go figure.
Too bad he’s made out of glass but he had his moment in the WC and did his job.
Watched Messi play last night and just knew he was not going to score that PK, his mind is somewhere else where he should have been back in ARG and not Miami.
As I said before, it’s time to look for the younger, faster and more motivated generation plus the younger vets to take the Albiceleste into the future
Made of glass, missed half the season, and still got more goals and assists than Thiago Almada and Nico Gonzalez COMBINED.
Nothing to do with quality or fitness, Everything to do with blatant cartoonish favoritism.
Dybala would have been a better call up to the Mundial than Almada
Tell me about it! If Dybala had been injured, I would’ve understood leaving him out. But he was fit and coming off a statistically good season. Yet Scaloni decided to take Almada over Dybala, Soule and Buendia, when all three were having far better seasons and Almada was having a disastrous one.
And the final made those decisions look even worse. Dybala, Soule, Buendia even Lo Celso could’ve been incredibly useful when Enzo, De Paul, Mac Allister and Messi were having basically zero impact going forward. We desperately needed someone capable of creating something to give Spain something different to worry about but Scaloni had left several players capable of doing exactly that at home.
And why the hell would you start Nico.G? He had been far more effective coming off the bench, where his energy and directness could actually make a difference against tired legs. Instead, Scaloni took away one of his most useful weapons from the bench by starting him.
The defence was another mess!! Molina had been disastrous for Atleico, yet Scaloni seemed to have no convincing alternative plan. Licha and Cuti spent so much time covering the cracks that Scaloni igonred purposely that eventually their legs gave out, and Spain scored twice!
Yes, Scaloni won us the World Cup, and he’ll always deserve credit for that. But people forget that he made some similarly questionable selections in 2022. The difference was that things broke our way, Scaloni was forced to give Enzo and Julian their chance. Otherwise, we were going into that tournament with Joaquin Correa as Lautaro’s backup. We could have won our 4th but a clue less coach cost us again!!