Friday 22 June 2018

MY TAKE ON THE GAME BETWEEN ARGENTINA VS CROATIA .

yesterday argetina played crotia . to be honest i had never seen such a weaker argentina side in my life . they all talk about maradona but it was not lone maradona . he had a great support cast who would do the work for him . sampoli is talking about how the other player didnot get with messi and that is cause for defeat . if you had looked closely then i think that messi is not 100% . either he is injured or unfit and that is why he is not seeing more of the ball . secondly it is sampoli who is to be blamed for the defeat . its his team he is the one who has chosen the players . he is the one who has chosen the team and had devised the tactics . if messi is not fit then he should had just dropped him and showed the balls . sampoli just put the players on the pitch and then wants his team to gel . geling doesnt happens overnight . plus the coach needs to have his thoughts cleared if his team needs to perform . all of failure falls squarely on sampoli's shoulder and he should be the one who needs to be put to sword . i had never ever seen argentina team getting outmuscled and outpaced by the opposition . they were literally second best all night .

argentina started the game with 3-2-1-3 formation . while crotia started the game with 4-3-3 formation with brozovic playing the anchor role in the middle of the midfield . even before the game anybody would read the script that messi wasnt going to get time and space on the ball and that is why brozovic was bought in front of the back four . the game started brightly for argentina with messi finding aguero and releasing him behind the back four and this was the only chance created by messi and the argies . after that the game just slipped out of argies hand . what were argentina were going to do with the ball is very questionable . sampoli played two wing backs with the thinking that they would stretch crotia's defense but while doing that he didnt take into account other factors . first off he was having aguero in the middle so aguero beating lovren and riga in the air is not possible .secondly just consider the mobility of perez and mascherano to modric and rakitic . crotia had better midfielders than argentina . argentina were always going to have problems when they were going to bring the ball from wide areas to inside of pitch because croatia were going to have numbers behind the ball and most importantly argentina's interplay wasnt that crisp . to be honest going forward argentina just didnt had a clear plan and most importantly what is sampoli doing on the sidelines pacing up and down . he should had corrected and gone to plan b but sampoli for me just didnt had a plan b . instead he took off perez and bought messi in the midfield . now when  you bring your best player that far from the goal you give opposition the chance because you have to move the ball that much to get the ball to opposition box and in doing so you give the opposition that much chance to stop you in the tracks . the other thing was that argentina were trying to play out of the back a very risky thing to do against a good opposition . it was always risky for argies to play out of the back . argies offense not working is all sampoli's fault and he should  answer for that and not messi . messi didnt made the tactics it was sampoli . 

speaking of tactics sampoli wanted to stretch the play so he deployed two wing backs and to play out of the back with the thinking that croatia would come out and press them . i havent seen a team who had gone to press opposition in their half . instead all the team are playing safe and sitting back and press team when they come in their half . secondly team are not going to chase you in wide instead they want  you to come and then defend in numbers . sampoli's tactics were just not justifying with the ground realities .  most importantly all the teams are not capable or playing out of the press and it doesnt work very well .without the ball argentina were having five at the back so both vrsjlko and strinic had no opposing player for a good half of the pitch . the tactical problem was that whether the fullbacks tuck alongside the centre backs or do they go on and press their opposite numbers which leaves the centre backs exposed .

croatia had a simple game plan they just wanted to hit argentina on the counter and most importantly they had players to do that with manzukic and rebic very good at holding the ball . most importantly the man of the match performance came from their three midfielders  modric,rakitic and brozovic who moved the ball very well .

when the match started the only players that i was worrying about were caballero and subasic who are good goal keepers but are mistake prone and i wasnt wrong with my assumption with subasic making a hash of the situation when he should had just gone to collect the ball when lovren was sheilding it and asking him to collect it . for caballero's mistake i would again put sampoli in the cage because he wants them to play out of the back a move which backfired .
all and all hope argentina are just not the team who can win the cup and for me crotia are the dark horse who can go all the way since they have the team and style to do it . 

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