The Argentine team focuses more on VAR than on its playing limitations (Kicker, Germany)

 

The coach of the Argentine national team, Lionel Scaloni -who never before led any professional team- chose to complain more about the incidence of VAR in two decisive plays, than in the operation of his team, which could not go beyond the draw at home against Paraguay last Thursday and that they must travel to Lima to face Peru next Tuesday to complete the fourth day of the eighteen that make up the South American qualifying group for the 2022 World Cup.

The Argentine team totals seven points out of nine possible, it is second in the table of positions among ten teams, two points below Brazil, but its game does not convince and few pay attention to its next rival, who barely obtained one point and is in a crisis after being a finalist in the last Copa América in 2019 and having qualified for the 2018 World Cup.

Scaloni, after the 1-1 draw against Paraguay in Buenos Aires (in the last 47 years, the Argentine team could only beat it once, in 2012, for the World Cup qualification), focused on two highly demanded plays, although especially, the hard foul committed by Ángel Romero at the middle fielder of Bayer Leverkusen, Exequiel Palacios, at 28 minutes into the first half, going with his two knees towards the lower part of the back (very similar to that foul of the Colombian Camilo Zúñiga to Neymar that cost him his exit from the World Cup in 2014).

"Shameful!" Scaloni shouted, from his place, to the Brazilian referee Raphael Claus, who did not even admonish Romero. “I take a little breath before I answer,” he said, visibly upset, at the subsequent press conference. I think it is necessary to unify the VAR criteria in some way because he could have acted in several plays and he did not, and I do not speak from good or bad faith because now we are without a player for days or months”. The coach, on the other hand, seemed to forget a clear penalty not charged in the first half for Paraguay by Nicolás Otamendi, when there was not even a consultation with the VAR.

Palacios has a fracture in his spine that will require two months of inactivity but he was not operated on, and a controversy broke out in the Argentine media about whether Romero’s fault was in revenge for another very hard one that the Argentine player had against his twin brother Oscar (on Thursday, on the Paraguayan substitute bench) at River 0 San Lorenzo 1 on December 8 last for the Argentine Super League Cup, when Palacios was still playing for River before being transferred to Bayer Leverkusen. In that match, the Argentine player was sent off for that foul.

Regarding the game, Scaloni acknowledged that he was surprised by Paraguay’s scheme in the first twenty minutes when "they handled the ball better and we did not arrive with pressure and that is how the penalty goal came" (converted by Romero), but that starting from the disadvantage "it was all of us, who reacted and dominated and even scored one more goal than them, which was annulled by the VAR, but we leave calm, although with a bittersweet taste due to the result".

Scaloni refers to a goal well disallowed to Lionel Messi by VAR in the second half, although due to a foul committed in the Argentine field by Nicolás González, from Stuttgart, to Romero, 27 seconds earlier, which led to long protests from many players and the bench of substitutes.

González, who made his debut as a starter for the Argentine national team in the qualifying group, not only had to replace the injured side Nicolás Tagliafico at the last minute, but also as a left midfielder, and was the author of the draw, with a header, after a corner taken by Giovani Lo Celso, who had replaced Palacios.

Everything indicates that for Tuesday against Peru, Scaloni would opt for a team very similar to the one that faced Peru, in which a very lonely Lionel Messi was seen, barely helped by Lo Celso, since he entered, and with few interlocutors in the attack, composed only by Lucas Ocampos and Lautaro Martínez. Only Di María and Bayer Leverkusen striker Lucas Alario appear as options in those positions.