Unbeaten and with Messi happy, Argentina reaches the Cup as one of the favorites

If cabal, a word so dear to Argentine fans, really exists in football, Argentina will not be world champions.

This one prays that the team that arrives well and with morale to the Cup does not win it.

Didier Deschamps was questioned in France in 2018 and was the midfielder of a team that seemed to have no offensive strength in 1998. Spain struggled with the reputation of never arriving in 2010. Brazil qualified with great suffering in 2002 and, in 1994, Carlos Alberto Parreira spent the qualifiers listening to the shouts of “Telê Santana” coming from the stands.

Argentina was so discredited in 1986 that no TV station in the country bothered to send narrators and commentators to Mexico, as they were sure the team would play the three matches of the group stage and return home.

The albiceleste can always be pointed out as one of the favorites for the shirt, tradition and for having Lionel Messi. But this year in Qatar, that rings true. Champion of the 2021 Copa América by defeating the Brazilian team at Maracanã, Lionel Scaloni’s team accumulates an unbeaten record of 35 games.

The last defeat was against the same Brazil, in 2019, in the semifinal of the Copa América. An odd match, in which President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) almost took an Olympic lap at halftime. The team led by Tite made a controversial 2-0 and Messi would later say that the tournament was arranged to be won by the hosts.

Argentina also defeated Italy 3-0 in the first Uefa-Conmebol final, in 2022, and what drew the most attention was not the score but the football. Especially in the second half, it was a ride.

Scaloni seems to have found a more reliable goalkeeper than Armani (Dibu Martínez), defenders who take to the field without any fear of stopping the opponent for better or worse (Cuti Romero and Lisandro Martínez), Ángel Di María in good form, a forward fatal in Lautaro Martínez and Lionel Messi happy.

“It’s my last Worlds. It certainly is. I feel good physically, I had a very good pre-season this year that I couldn’t do the year before. [com a Copa]”, said shirt 10, in an interview with ESPN Argentina.

It’s a favoritism that can only be matched by world champions France and Brazil. This is rare for Argentina and Lionel Messi in the tournament. It was only in 2006, when he was still a 19-year-old boy and he wasn’t even a starter, that the team arrived with such morale.

The rule in the country has been distrust. In 2010, there was Maradona in charge, but the team almost missed out on the Cup in South Africa. The image of those qualifiers was that of coach Maradona throwing himself on the pitch at Monumental de Nuñez, in a storm, to celebrate Martín Palermo’s saving goal in stoppage time against Peru.

Four years later, Argentina reached the final against Germany, but the team gained confidence during the tournament. There was such fear that, after their debut against Bosnia, the players asked coach Alejandro Sabella to change the 5-3-2 formation. He answered.

“In 2014 we had a spectacular group. We came from fights after the Copa America, bad qualifiers. We won [o primeiro jogo] and from there we lost no more. We were getting stronger and we didn’t stop until the final we deserved to win”, analyzes Messi, about the 1-0 fall to Germany.

Any problems that happened before the World Cup in Brazil do not compare to the cycle for the 2018 tournament in Russia. Argentina lost two Copa América finals, had three coaches in the qualifiers and fell apart from the start, against Iceland. Sampaoli missed the group so much that he even consulted Messi about a substitution he would make against Nigeria.

This is in the past because players are enjoying a champion Argentina team, harmonious and in great form, as never before. The icing on the cake is the World Cup.-