Argentina eked out a 1-0 win at home against Ecuador yesterday on the back of Messi's ~80th minute FK from just outside the box. It was a terrific no doubter of a goal, and he ran off to celebrate as soon as the ball left his foot.
Otherwise though, Messi had a pretty weak game by his standards. The announcers were talking about how Messi was and looked fatigued as his offseason was unusual by going from a long European club season and straight into competitive matches for Inter Miami. I didn't quite catch if they were saying he wasn't up to match-level fitness or if he didn't have a sufficient break, but regardless of the cause the analysis is accurate.
The bigger story about the match IMO is Scaloni's selection of Lautaro and Nico Gonzalez over Julian Alvarez and Angel Di Maria (and in Gonzalez's case, Almada and Palacios too IMO). Lautaro catches a lot of flak from la hinchada Argentina but I thought he was just a touch below acceptable yesterday. He does have better output for Inter than Argentina, but he's had hot runs for the NT previously. Anyway, he had 1.5 chances yesterday that he should've converted but he was unlucky to hit the post on one of them. He pressed like a madman per usual, and while he didn't look sharp in the first half, he had a much stronger second half. Even if we assume that Scaloni is going to rotate these 4 players, I would've thought that Julian and ADM would've gotten the nod at home. Scaloni either has a weird infatuation with yesterday's starters or he's trying to manage squad chemistry.
In the MF, it was Enzo-Mac-De Paul. RDP is a fucking psycho and he had a pretty great match. His workrate is insane, he leads Argentina's physical play (alongside Romero), and he still can play some decent combos in attack. His touch in the final third isn't elite, but if he's the 6th, 7th, or 8th most important attacker, it's fine. Mac and Enzo seemed to have a pretty fluid positional relationship and while Enzo began the match as the DMF, Mac would drop in occasionally to allow for Enzo to push higher. This got flipped to start the second half, I assume because Enzo is a little better at breaking down defenders off the dribble and plays more key passes. But Enzo was about as poor as I've seen him yesterday. He still had his impeccable control but his combination and final passing were a bit off. Mac had a solid game but he didn't create too many chances for the forwards either. Frankly, I think both of those guys underperforming had more to do with Gonzalez than anything else.
I don't mean to knock the guy too hard, but I've yet to see what Nico Gonzalez does for this team. He's got good output in Serie A for Fiorentina and his defenders always cite his workrate, but I just don't see him breaking down defenses in any way, and he had a couple of half-chances yesterday where he either mistimed, misdirected, or otherwise didn't make/complete a run. In the first half, Argentina had nothing going down the left side, and they missed El Huevo Acuna and Lisandro. That said, I don't think Nico's performance was entirely due to Tagliafico (a fine player but one that doesn't offer much going forward) since when ADM and Julian came on the attack really hit another gear.
On the right side, Molina got the start over Montiel and while I used to think they were very similar players, Molina's showing in the WC during open play was a noticeable notch better. However, he couldn't quite get going yesterday even though he got into good positions. He was mostly combining with RDP and Messi and I honestly do chalk some of his performance to their disjointed effort. That said, Enzo and Mac were also floating around that right half space and Molina didn't exactly shine.
In the middle, Romero had one of the best games I've ever seen from a CB. He bossed everything that came his way, registering 5 tackles won to lead all players, and covered for Molina and the MF while only getting whistled for 1 foul. He also did his usual crazy by getting irate at seemingly random events, although replay showed that chewing out Enner Valencia for diving was justified. Otamendi had a really excellent but weird game. He barely touched the ball, but registered 2 interceptions and a tackle won. Him and Romero held down the back extremely well in a sketchy 5-10 minute stretch in the second half when Argentina was pushing real hard to score. Having confidence in the defense to snuff out stuff like that allows Argentina to push 5, 6, and even 7 players forward against a packed defense. Romero even got forward a couple of times in the second half and created some real chances. I think he's easily a top 3-5 CB in the world ATM.
As I mentioned before, Julian and ADM showed much more threat than Nico and to a lesser extent Lautaro after coming on. Paredes came on and made extremely rash fouls as he does, and got a YC for his play. He's a real liability IMO, but his skillset is too valuable to leave off the squad. Palacios' cameo wasn't noteworthy.
Emi didn't have to do anything, but did register 3 saves.
Props to Ecuador for playing a very organized game. It did render Caicedo pretty toothless, and the only time Ecuador got anything going really was when they played longballs over the top once Argentina really started pushing numbers forward midway through the second half.
I expect a lot of rotation for Tuesday's match at altitude away at Bolivia.
VAMOS VAMOS ARGENTINA! MUCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!
