Argentina national team coach Lionel Scaloni spoke about Leonardo Balerdi, Nico Paz and the injuries to the players.
Lionel Scaloni will be without Leonardo Balerdi for the World Cup due to injury. It was announced that Balerdi suffered an injury in training and will miss the World Cup.
The Argentina national team won 2-0 against Honduras and Lionel Scaloni spoke at a press conference after the match. Here is what he had to say about Leonardo Balerdi and his injury:
“When I sat down yesterday at the press conference, we had hope that it would not be what everyone was thinking. It was confirmed that Balerdi has a problem in the soleus and we had to take him out of action, unfortunately. It was too risky.
“The replacement isn’t there yet. I don’t want to alarm anyone because we’re not at 100% with several players. Maybe that decision doesn’t just depend on a center back.
“We’re going to wait and draw conclusions based on what the team needs. The misfortune of Balerdi means we have to rethink situations with other team mates.
“We have the opportunity of one more match to draw more conclusions and not rush things. We’re not going to make a decision until Tuesday and see how other guys are. We’ll wait.”
Scaloni also spoke about Nico Paz and Julián Álvarez:
“Nico Paz is available and we are calm with Julián. We will not have problems.”
Almada’s finishing and decision making in the final third have decline significantly this year, and he hasn’t really shown much improvement since moving to Europe either. Garnacho’s stagnation and ultra poor finishing ended up costing him a world cup spot, yet Almada still gets to go over players like Buendia & Soule. Hopefully he doesn’t have a R.Palacios in the 2014 final type of miss at the world cup. With all these injuries piling up, I’m starting to get serious 2018 World Cup vibes.
Almada is not same as before…Simeone killed him at Atletico. Buendia would have been better for that role.
Lo Celso and Barco already there in LCM backup position.
Nico and Simeone can play attacking left. Almda always played better for Argentina..but it seems he lost touch because of less playing time in Atletico..!