Argentina national team coach Lionel Scaloni spoke about Agustín Giay and Nicolás Capaldo.
Lionel Scaloni is set to announce on Thursday or Friday his list of players for the World Cup. Scaloni has called-up Agustín Giay, Nicolás Capaldo, Tomás Aranda, Santiago Beltrán, Joaquín Freitas, Ignacio Ovando and Simón Escobar to the team for the two friendly matches against Honduras and Iceland. Speaking in an interview with DSports, here is what Scaloni had to say:
“There’s Agustín Giay, there’s Capaldo who can also contribute to us and they’re young players that we think could even be on the 26 man list. Why not?
“Without a doubt, beyond the fact that they’re young kids, thinking about the future, everything we do is thinking that they can contribute to us if something happens after the final list is closed and up to the first match, where we have time to make changes.”
Scaloni is heavily a loyalty based coach & would not drop a player unless there is some real talent emerging. Even players like Buendia & Soule have hence struggled to break in. There is nothing exceptional in Giay & Capaldo’s club form. Giay infact gets less minutes. Capaldo mostly plays in a backline 3. I think the reason Scaloni in last minute is serious with both these candidates could be because he is seeing one of Molina or Montiel having fitness issues which may not be getting fixed prior to WC. If Molina and Montiel are in good fitness levels, Scaloni will blindly pick them.
If Scaloni is willing to experiment with new players this close to the World Cup instead of fully trusting his core group, then clearly he still isn’t completely satisfied with the team. It may be late, but it’s not too late to move on from players like Montiel and Acuna. we already witnessed in 2018 what happens when older and wahsedup slower players like Masch, Rojo, E.Perez and Fazio go up against fast, athletic and young teams like France. Argentina can’t repeat that mistake again.
Also, Nico Paz not being fully convinced about returning to Madrid already shows maturity beyond his age. He’s seen how everything there revolves around Mbappe and how young talents can easily get sidelined regardless of ability. Staying at Como, developing consistently, and p playing champions league football could honestly be better for his career right now than sitting behind toxic players at Madrid. The team is built around him there whwre as in Madrid Papa Perez is obsessed with Mbappe.
So that means Molina/ Giay will be our RB
Now lets see who is going to be backup LB for tagliafico