FIFA World Cup 2018: What is the problem with Argentina?

Croatia’s surprising 3-0 win over Argentina put the Albiceleste in the verge of a shocking group stage elimination after just two games played in FIFA World Cup and highlighted the troubles of Lionel Messi’s side.

First and foremost, Argentina looked as a team poor in talent. They lack top players especially at goalkeeper, centre-backs, full-backs and wide midfielders. Argentina still faced a lot of problems during their qualification campaign through the World Cup. These problems led to the Argentinian FA changing three head coaches during qualification, with Jorge Sampaoli being the third one.

Former Chile manager Sampaoli is well-known to build his sides around furious pressing and a continuous variation of team’s shape in the way to make his team able to exploit opposition’s weakness. He’s also a strong believer in back three formations.

Sampaolis tinkering approach hasnt really worked with the Albiceleste. He started his regime over there playing a three-man backline but abandoned it following the 4-2 collapse to Nigeria in a friendly game played in November. Subsequently, Sampaoli went to line up a four-man defence centred around Federico Fazio. In the debut game against Iceland, Sampaoli confirmed the four-man defence replacing Fazio with Marcos Rojo.

The reasons behind the 4-2-3-1 Sampaoli lined up against the Islanders was obvious. First, a fluid 4-2-3-1 morphing in a 2-3-3-1-1 when in possession, is the base Sampaoli’s formation utilized since he took the job over there. Then, the 4-2-3-1 shape looked more adapt to suit Messi.

As expected, Argentina retained ball possession and shoed interchanging offensive rotations between his players, especially when it came to Messi. In fact, into Argentinian fluid offence, Barcelona’s star often moved himself into the right half-space with full-back Eduardo Salvio providing width operating out wide on the right flank.

That said, an extremely compact Iceland was able to close the spaces in front of their defence. Heimir Hallgrímsson’s side was good enough to retain both horizontal and vertical compactness. They also closed well Messi every time Argentina’s no.10 get the ball in the middle. So, Messi had few spaces to operate in. Also, Messi’s teammates weren’t able to help their key player as their movements didn’t offer Messi’s good passing lines. It resulted in an offensive phase reduced to Messi dribbling against every Icelanders around him. Furthermore, with the central areas of the pitch so closed, Messi was often forced to collapse behind to help the midfielders to get the ball through the offensive third. It was also due to the fact that both Javier Mascherano and Lucas Biglia, playing in deeper midfield positions, lacked the needed dynamism to play as no.8 supporting the attack coming from behind.

Argentina was so forced to play in wider areas where Nicolas Tagliafico, Maximiliano Meza, and Salvio didn’t offer enough talent. Di Maria was the only skilfull footballer wide open, but he can’t contribute enough with his cutting inside movements until Tagliafico started to play higher up.

After this poor first display, Sampaoli went back to his original thought in the following game against Croatia. Argentinian coach lined up a three-man backline in a 3-4-2-1 shape featuring Gabriel Mercado e Tagliafico at the flanks of Nicolas Otamendi with Enzo Perez playing in the middle of the field alongside Mascherano.

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