Argentina lost 1-0 against Ecuador with Nicolás Otamendi getting a red card.
Lionel Scaloni’s team lost their last match of the World Cup qualifiers with a referee that gave out a red card for both teams.
The first half started with Ecuador having most of the chances. Emiliano Martínez made a big save early on and minutes later, Leonardo Balerdi had a big block inside the penalty area.
Emiliano Martínez made another save, this time near post. Argentina did not create many chances as Ecuador kept pressuring.
Leonardo Balerdi was beaten to the ball and Nicolás Otamendi pushed Valencia from behind as the referee gave Otamendi the red card. Otamendi will miss Argentina’s first match at the World Cup as the red cards carry over from World Cup qualification.
Juan Foyth was substituted in for Giuliano Simeone and Rodrigo De Paul was the captain after Otamendi’s red card. Nicolás González was hit in the face by Hincapié’s arm and was bleeding from the mouth but the referee did not go to VAR and gave a yellow card.
In injury time, Nicolás Tagliafico headed to win the ball inside the penalty area but his arm hit the Ecuadorian player’s face.
The referee went to VAR and would award Ecuador a penalty kick. Emiliano Martínez would dive to his right and Valencia would go down the middle and score to give Ecuador the 1-0 lead.
Moments after the restart, Caicedo would get red carded for Ecuador. Lionel Scaloni would bring on Julián Álvarez, Franco Mastantuono, Nahuel Molina and Giovani Lo Celso for Lautaro Martínez, Leandro Paredes, Gonzalo Montiel and Rodrigo De Paul.
Argentina would not be able to score an equalizer and Ecuador would get the 1-0 win.
Nicolás Otamendi's red card for Argentina and he will miss Argentina's first match at the World Cup. 🇦🇷 pic.twitter.com/lZ9BQXPyUW
— Roy Nemer (@RoyNemer) September 9, 2025
For me ,our strikers should be Alvarez, Panichelli, Castellanos or Jose Lopez .Lautaro
Wingers : Matias Soule , Benjamin dorminguez ,E Zeballos ,Maher Carrizo
Attacking Midfield : Almada ,Soule ,Valentin Carboni ,Prestianni
Box to Box : Nico Paz ,Cristian Medina
no.5 : Equi Fernandez ,F Redondo ,J Nardoni
So my team should be
###### panichelli
#Almada########Soule
###C Medina#Carboni
####Equi Fernandez
N Gonzalez#Senesi#Romero#Foyth
#####Martinez
B
Parody account
Best of luck for your team in your imaginary world cup. 🤣
What a joking 11 it will be …
Make some sense brother
this is really a good joke..lol!
Nice joke 🤣😂😂
IMO ,our team won’t be easy to defend the world cup title or even no chance to do so .At the moment only a few months left ,scaloni won’t be able to change a lot .not to say he doesn’t have guts to do so .
AFA should think about who can take up scaloni ‘s job in future .I really appreciate Palacente who I think really know our youngsters.
Two players in these two matches really disappointed me .They are Nico Paz and Mastantuono .
Both are overestimated. Nico Paz as a attack midfield he lack of one on one skill compare with Almada and Soule .Some times he even cant protect the ball and a bit clumsy when dribble so I would say he can be used as a box to box in future .
Mastantuono is really raw and look like a headless chicken, no one on one ability ,didn’t coordinate with teammates, sometimes lost ball possession easily .he is still too young to be given a number 10 shirt .
I truly think scaloni ‘s cycle will end after world cup 2026 .He can build up a team surrounding messi but afterwards he didn’t improve the team a lot .The most exciting thing is almada becomes better and better .Scaloni didn’t give many chance to youngsters. Soule is a good example ,just look at how raw Mastantuono was who I believe is a U20 players rather than national team .But Matias Soule at this stage is better version of dybala .We should build up a team surrounding Soule and Almada
This team without almada and messi can’t beat Spain ,France, England or even portugal.
a few mistakes by scaloni in these four years after world cup
1, No proper replacement for otamendi ,Tagliafico ,Montiel
2, No suitable wingers after di Maria retirement
3,No one can’t take up messi ‘s job on the right side
4,No tall Central forward
In my opinion
1,Senesi ,N Perez ,Foyth ,Romero are four reliable central defenders
2, Agustin Giay can Replace montiel ,Lucas Esquivel should be given more chance in LB or Nico Gonzalez as a LB
3,Matias Soule is far more better than Paz ,Mastantuano at this stage . Maher Carrizo ,E Zeballos , Benjamin Dominguez are really wingers.
4, Valentin Carboni can take up the job of de Paul
5, Panichelli,Jose Lopez can try as No 9
Also in central midfield we have Equi Fernandez . But I am afraid scaloni doesn’t have guts to do so