Argentina: Lionel Messi can not even overthrow the biggest underperforming football

In 2019, Argentina plays really bad football. Everyone who watched them launch their Copa America campaign with a flagrant lack of style can attest to this.

It's not fair that they lost the match 2-0. Teams can often play well while losing games, and Colombia is definitely not a cup. "The score did not reflect the game" had joined the pantheon of terrible football clichés a long time ago, but it certainly was not the case. They lost the game because they were very poor. Very, very poor.

Identifying precisely why they were so horrible is not easy, although the manager must clearly take responsibility. The club that Lionel Scaloni chose always seemed to fear some midfielders, which turned out to be the case.

In the absence of a winner and no one in the middle of the pitch able to take the ball in the U-turn and feed his talented forwards, Argentina was lethargic, easy to defend and undeniably conducive to napping for large parts of the match.

Asleep at HT, watched the second half this morning. Argentina is still so terrible. Colombia already looks like a classic Queiroz team – good and solid, a real rhythm that threatens to break.

– Jonathan Wilson (@jonawils) June 16, 2019

Those responsible for organizing Argentina's preparations for the tournament also deserve some control. Since being eliminated from the World Cup by France almost a year ago, the Argentinian national team has played only three matches; two of them almost three months ago, the third being a rout against a team in Nicaragua currently ranked 139th in the world.

A lack of cohesion and competitiveness was not only expected, but almost guaranteed by such lamentable preparation. To put things into perspective, before the League of Nations semi-final against the Netherlands earlier this month, England had already played eight times since the World Cup, including in matches against the United States. Spain and Croatia.

Although it may be unfair to compare Argentina to a team that competed in the League of Nations throughout the year, it still shows that it is still possible to schedule international meetings. Even the South American Brazilian has managed to play two warm-up matches and is fortunate to have a group of players much more talented than this Argentinian team.

Of course, there is no shame in having a less impressive team than a Brazilian team that owns an Align spine, Thiago Silva, Fernandinho.Philippe Coutinho (whose production in Brazil is much more comparable to his Liverpool form only his Barcelona indices), and Roberto Firmino.

However, the team of Argentina is not only poor compared to Brazil, it is poor compared to many other teams. They are currently ranked 11th in the FIFA world rankings, and few countries just behind them would probably consider it a bit generous.

It is not that the majority of their players are bad, they are simply suffering from one of the most debilitating diseases of professional football: mediocrity.

Nicolas Otamendi has been a solid and reliable servant for Manchester City for years, but when everyone is in shape, he does not start. Giovani Lo Celso and Leandro Paredes are talented footballers, but they are accompanied by a player who still practices his trade in the Mexican league.

The entire defense and midfielder of Argentina is composed of good footballers, but not great footballers.

This is something that certainly can not be said of their attack, where Paulo Dybala is just good enough for a place on the bench. Yet even the proven quality of a player like Angel Di Maria has always been more evident within a dominant team – it's a player who excels when surrounded by teammates from around the world. first class, which is rare when he plays in an Argentinian jersey. .

Of course, when it comes to Argentine football, there is only one name that really matters.

Even Lionel Messi – the man considered by many as the greatest footballer of all time – has never been able to systematically reproduce the shape of his club for his country, and we will always remember the empty shelf – in what must be a Narnian trophy proportions – where an international crown should sit.

Of course, many of Messi's most fervent fans will inevitably boast of his 2014 World Cup tournament title, where Argentina lost the final against Germany thanks to a winner extensions of Mario Gotze.

However, even those who would wear the thickest Messi-tinted glasses should admit that it was a dubious choice for the Golden Ball that year. FIFA has clearly followed a wrong logic of; The best player in the world is in the final of the World Cup, so he must be the best player of the tournament.

All this while in reality, according to his own criteria, it had been pretty average.

The Argentine magician's inability to boast of his country's glory was further accentuated around 10 pm on Sunday, June 9, when Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo clinched another trophy by winning the league's first title Nations.

Another international triumph for Messi's big rival sent Twitter's warriors into a frenzy; like winding springs waiting patiently for the war cry that was the last whistle of the referee Alberto Mallenco. The result was, of course, undeniable proof that Ronaldo was the best player that Messi.

The fact that the former only played in two of the six matches and his team-mate Bernardo Silva had just melt to claim the man of the match and the tournament's title player were unimportant details – Was about Ronaldo triumph, and almost more importantly, the failure of Messi.

This has long been the story of the rivalry between these two titans of the game: the fans of each player seem to need to demolish one to be able to build the other. To love both is heresy.

The last thing the world needs is another article comparing Messi and Ronaldo, but this helps to reinforce the fact that the Argentinian team is below par with that of Portugal. This is not to deprive Ronaldo of his personal performances, nor to completely dissolve Messi from the fault of his less stringent standards in an Argentinian jersey, but if you manage to give Lionel Messi an air less than extraordinary, you will meet serious problems. .

It is obviously far too early to deduce from Argentina this year's Copa America; they only played one game and it was against one of the strongest teams in the tournament.

As lamentable as they were last Saturday, one would think that they will improve a lot on Thursday morning when they will face a team from Paraguay who had only managed one day. draw against Qatar in their first match.

However, it is almost impossible to imagine that this Argentine team is improving enough to claim its first Copa America since 1993. Football fans around the world are hoping it will be the year that Messi breaks his voodoo international, but there is very little evidence to suggest that this team is capable of it.

All we can say with absolute certainty is that, that Argentina loses all of its group matches and that Messi misses three penalties and five goals, or that he scores 20 times and offers on his own a gift to Argentina, Copa 2019, positions on Twitter will not change one iota.