Players cut from Argentina national team for World Cup

Except Senesi, Buendia and Giay not of them deserved

The friendly against Mauritania (ranked 137th in the world) on March 27, 2026, was a massive red flag .

First Half Second Half
Score Argentina 2–0 Argentina 2–1 (Mauritania scored in 94th minute)
Shots on target Multiple Zero
Performance Controlled, professional “Dreadful,” “flat,” “didn’t care”

Argentina went into halftime comfortable at 2-0. Then came the second half. Messi entered to a roaring crowd, but instead of sparking the team, Argentina collapsed. They did not register a single shot on target after the break, while Mauritania grew into the match, forced multiple saves from Emiliano Martinez, and eventually scored a late consolation goal .

Emiliano Martinez was brutally honest afterward:

“It was one of the worst games we’ve played… We lacked intensity, defensive solidity, and conviction when defending.”

He went even further: “We’d have liked to face high-level opponents… Now we don’t know if we’re actually a top 10 team in the world” .

The talent is there. The system is there. But the intensity and hunger that defined the 2022 champions appear to be fading. If Scaloni can’t reignite that fire in the next few weeks, your concern about second-half collapses could become the defining story of Argentina’s title defense.

The concern about Argentina’s performance after the 65-minute mark is not a new phenomenon born from recent friendly matches; it is a recurring vulnerability that nearly derailed their 2022 World Cup campaign and has resurfaced during the current preparations for 2026. During that triumphant run in Qatar, Argentina consistently demonstrated a worrying pattern of surrendering control and almost conceding victory in the final stages of knockout matches: against Australia in the Round of 16, Argentina dominated for long stretches but saw their lead shrink to a precarious 2-1 in the 77th minute after an own goal, forcing a nervy finish where they ceded possession and survived late Australian pressure. This trend escalated dramatically in the quarter-final against the Netherlands, where Argentina threw away a commanding 2-0 lead-conceding twice in the 83rd minute and the 11th minute of stoppage time—to end regulation time in a 2-2 draw before requiring penalties to progress. The final against France provided the ultimate evidence of this fragility; Argentina was cruising at 2-0 until the 80th minute, only for Kylian Mbappé to score twice in the 80th and 81st minutes to force extra time, and after Messi put Argentina ahead again in the 108th minute, Mbappé equalized from the penalty spot in the 118th minute to send the match to a shootout. This historical pattern has been compounded by Argentina’s most recent friendly match on March 28, 2026, a concerning 2-1 victory over Mauritania (ranked 137th in the world) where, despite leading 2-0 at half-time, the team produced zero shots on target in the second half and conceded a late goal in the 94th minute, prompting goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez to admit it was “one of the worst games we’ve played” and question whether the team remains among the world’s top ten.

The root causes of this persistent late-game problem are multi-faceted, stemming from a combination of complacency, age, and physical decline. Firstly, complacency and a lack of intensity have been explicitly named by senior players as the single biggest threat to the defending champions, with Nicolás Tagliafico acknowledging that maintaining high training intensity daily has become difficult and that the team has a tendency to relax when ahead. This mental drop-off is exacerbated by Argentina’s friendly schedule, which since the 2022 World Cup has consisted almost exclusively of weak opponents ranked outside the top 80—nations like Indonesia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mauritania—giving the squad no meaningful practice at managing sustained pressure against quality opposition and fostering bad habits of taking their foot off the gas. Secondly, the age profile of the squad directly impacts the physical capacity to maintain intensity through a full 90 minutes; with an average age approaching 29 years and key figures like Lionel Messi (38) and Nicolás Otamendi (38) well into their veteran years, data shows that players over 30 face a significantly higher risk of muscle injuries and require longer recovery times between high-intensity matches. The current injury crisis has laid this vulnerability bare—Messi is managing hamstring fatigue after being forced off during an MLS match, Cristian Romero is recovering from a knee ligament injury, goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez has a broken finger, and several other regulars are racing against the clock to be fit for the June 16 opener against Algeria. What this reveals is that Argentina’s late-game fragility is not merely tactical but physiological and psychological: a champion squad that has lost the hunger to dominate for 90 minutes, coupled with an aging core whose bodies cannot sustain the same intensity they produced in 2022, leaves Scaloni with the urgent task of rebuilding second-half resilience before the World Cup begins.