Argentina vs. Bolivia

This is why we love futbol . i said it jokingly but looking at the comparative scores it is absolutely crazy to see what can happen. Example: On saturday we beat venezuela 4 to 0 and Colombia beat bolivia 2 to 0. On Tuesday venezuela beats Colombia 2 to 0. In most sports that would mean that Argentina should quite comfortably win against Bolivia but instead lose 6 to 1? Another expample is the last world cup we beat serbia 6 to 0 and they had lost only 1 t 0 to Holland. We should kill Holland right? What does all of this mean ? I DONT KNOW!!

HAVE A NICE WEEKND EVERYONE.

Hopefully we all have other things in our lives that bring us happiness and our complete level of joy in life is not just tied to a bunch of futbol players

Posted from  United States

the reference to the brazil/peru game is that alexa commented that the players were tired because of their work in europe. I see your point alexa, I just don’t agree with it because these are professional players and excuses are cheap. losing 1-0 is one thing but 6 goals? there is more than being tired to that, there is having a rookie manager who should be an assistant and nothing more.

I support our teams but so far I have to say that spain is the only team that has impressed me and if they continue playing the way they have they deserve the world cup unless I see something very much different from both argentina and brazil which are both mired in mediocrity at the moment.

Wow, that’s so deep…

Posted from  United States

“MANE”
you always show up only when something goes wrong with or in argentina.
where were you & your expertise when argentina won againts venezuela & france

now that when we lost badly you come here to enjoy urself. you pretend here as an argentina supporter & praising brazil indirectly.

no one is making any excuse not the coach & neither the captain because there is another alomost similar game coming up in quito so as they (argentina) believe in themselves & we believe them too.

lets see what they will do aganist ecuador

Hello Boys/Girls,

Well as expected I’m sure we are still finding hard to come to terms of what happen in our last match against Bolivia. I know I am. It’s easier for me to imagine us trashing Bolivia 6-1 in Buenos Aires. It is possible to imagine Bolivia beating us in La Paz by an odd or two goal margin. But really took place was a REAL hard bitter pill to swallow.

Let us look at this as a very hard lesson for everyone (from Diego to the players). Let’s put this dark episode about our National Team behind us and mive from on here. I know Diego and the players are committed to the cause and they will do it.

Now may I present to you, our third episode of the Mundo Albiceleste podcast. Please have a listen to it and share us your views as well.

http://mundoalbiceleste.blogspot.com/2009/04/mundo-albiceleste-podcast-03.html

Posted from  Malaysia

Aside from the great match the Bolivians played and all the bitter stuff some troll-oriented people keep rubbing in on this blog, there is a technical consideration I believe needs to get addressed by the Maradona-Bilardo combo.
Even in victory (like over France and Venezuela), and no matter what the formation looks like, we still can’t find a way to connect the lines, especially between midfielders and forwards.
Enganche or no enganche, someone has to be playing in front of Mascherano and feed the forwards as needed.
Gago is a close call, but he gets very busy containing opponent midfielders and his long passes lack precision.
I’m not a fan of Verón, but I do think he has the type of game that could get that job done.
Maybe Montenegro deserves a try.
The thing is we have to cover that position to make it easy for our forwards to get in “one on ones” with the opponent defenders.
Saludos

Posted from  United States

well i finally saw the game last night on setanta sports. and in all honesty it was to painful to watch. from the start the bolivians attacked with venom. they had so many long range shots which mysteriouly kept hitting the target. what i don’t understand is why couldn’t we try to copy their game plan. after the lucho goal why didn’t blast more long range shots like they did. this is one of the disadvantages of playing 2 small strikers they have no power, their strength is to run and dribble the ball. well we ran to much or passing was awful, our defenders are slow. the sending off didn’t help us either. this game was just a royal mess. it was like bolivia was invinicble.

these are my ideas argentina has to play according to their oppoition. they just can’t go out and play their game. we must play counter attack and reserve energy when needed. i don’t care who wants to call this anti-football, or if it doesn’t make them dream or even if this isn’t typical arg football. for example when joe lewis fought ali his game plan was to attack, attack, attack, yes he won and it worked. then he tried the same thing with foreman and lost. foreman was a bull much bigger and physical than ali. what we need to do is adapt and know our opponents better than we know ourselves.

Check the picture on this article and click on it to enhance.
It’s Tévez (as a ball-boy) with his idol.

http://www.ole.clarin.com/notas/2009/04/04/informaciongeneral/01891335.html

Posted from  United States

nice one albo, they look a bit alike there, they could be brothers.

mightie,
I have not followed the qualifiers, of any country. I have been busy and only now have I followed them and only to a minor degree. I have always wrote that I am first a fan of brazil and no, I am not brazilian. I am a fan of brazil mostly because of its past which I partially witnessed in mexico 1970 and the pele era. in a game between argentina and brazil I will support brazil but in every other game I will support either team. brazil at this point sucks, it’s an utilitarian machine and lacks the virtue and imagination of the past. I like good soccer and this is why I was partial to portugal in the last cup and I like what spain is doing. I don’t mean to offend any fan of argentina but I cannot help it if argentinians take things too personal. it’s only a game, not a war, just a game. peace.

Hi Albo, can you summarize whats the the gist of this article? Google translate gives no justice to the article:)
http://www.riquelmeultimo10.com.ar/2009/03/la-historia-extraoficial-dos-renuncias.html

Higuain scored a superb goal yesterday for Real Madrid. Here’s the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgSPsu_fm9I

Posted from  United States

Mighty is right about mane. Very transparent.

Anand, that article talks about the possibility of an arrangement made by Maradona and the players to remove Basile from our NT, back between the games in China and the match we lost to Chile. The writer (a blogger) says Riquelme didn’t want to kick Basile from the team so everybody (except Mascherano) went against Riquelme.

Honestly, I don’t understand how, in the name of freedom of speech, some people publish such amounts of crap hoping their words are going to sound like news to some people.
I am not a big fan of Maradona as a coach (or anything that is not his former days as a player), but this type of fanatism crosses the line, in my opinion.

We should read the news first.
And then discuss them in a blog if we feel like.
But a blog created by a fanatic is hardly news for any of us.
Let’s not believe everything we read out there.
Nowadays it’s easy to “create” news out of nothing.
The problem Riquelme had with Maradona is that Diego criticized him on a radio station before talking to him alone. That’s all there is to it.
Diego opened his big mouth and made it public.
Riquelme felt offended, like he has done in the past.
To me, they were both wrong. They both thought about themselves before thinking about the Albicelste.
Saludos

Posted from  United States

The bitter chapter of the 6-1 loss to Bolivia has made its dent and, one way or another, all of us have dwelled on it in our own different ways.
I haven’t said much about it but it hurt a lot here too.
I know each of us has his/her own ways to look at it .
I, personally have this to say before turning the page on it for good.

I refuse to believe that players like Mascherano, Demichelis, Zanetti, Messi, Tévez, Agüero, just to name a few, had a bad day, all at the same time and in the same game.
I don’t buy that even when I am not a big fan of Maradona’s.
Our players have a heart and they all wanted to do right.
Watching Mascherano or Zanetti acting slow and getting late to the ball was enough for me.
Not only because of the caliber players they are, but because the caliber human beings they all are. They not only love the Argy jersey, they are top professional players.

As I mentioned before I have suffered the effect of altitude myself bad enough to remember it for ever.
A player can have a bad day, but an entire NT can’t have a bad day against a team that has only 2 chances to win a game away from home: “slim” and “none”.

Time will tell. It’s too bad that we have to wait again. No doubt it feels uncomfortable.
But I think these type of bizarre things end up doing something good to the players’ souls. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
In my mind, Argentina are getting ready to play great football.
We’ll see.
For now, good bye to La Paz, and congratulations to the Bolivian team who played the game of their lives.
No hard feelings, just desire to show the world what we can really do on the pitch.

Posted from  United States

Here here Albo, i totally agree with you. Just one thing Aguero didn’t play in this game.

My bad Day1star. And thanks for correcting my mistake.

Posted from  United States

that’s ok, the gist of wat u said though was totally correct.

I thought according to FIFA rules you cannot arrive more than a day early to the venue in question.

However, a separate team could have trained in the Andes in Argentina and then flown over to La Paz the day prior and been acclimated, which is what Pekerman did, if I recall correctly.

I don’t think the visiting team can get there earlier, but I could be wrong. Does anyone know the particulars?

Training is as progressive as it is regressive, in either case for both altitude players going to sea level as it for sea level athletes going to the higher atmospheric plates.
Thus figure out a three week plan for each (slow climb or slow decent per week) this is a short plan, I’m sure a longer adaptation plan would be better for us normal folk, but for the in shape athletic crowd the three week plan should suffice, there is no way around it.
If you scuba you know all about this, so there’s no worry just the knowledge, so maybe all soccer player’s (in this case) ought to get scuba certified =).
If I were coaching I would certainly consider these factors as evidence, and work within them.

Posted from  United States

I tried to search for all Argies presently playing with the respective positions, but could not get enough information.
Is there some site that keep track of players by nationality and position.

Posted from  Australia

The major problem for NT is Defence. Unlike Brazil, Italy or Sapin Argentina don’t have a world class Keeper. There not many options (except Angelari) avaialable for the Full Back positions after Zanetti and Sorin. Mo one has been able to replace Ayala (why the heel they don’t play Samuel ???).

For me the biggest problrm is Keeper and Full Backs. Argentina have enough quality centre backs. Its only that coaches have to play the right combination (no Heinze & Burdissio please). My ideal pairing will be Demicheles/Gonzalo with Samuel. For ne the team should play 3 at the back and play 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 depending on the situation and opposition:

Posted from  Pakistan

yeah,I would also be interested in how our young defenders playt, but cant follow them – can someone write smth about Garay, Pareja, Fazio, Gonzalo? How they play etc.? Because I heard that Garay had some problems with injuries and stuff and there was a period I couldnt see Gonzalo as a starter for Villarreal, so dont know if it was caused by his injury or underperforming. Thanks in advance.

Posted from  Poland

So are we out of the world cup?

Posted from  United States

José Sand has been scoring consistently for Lanús since last year.
He is a great #9.
Yesterday Lanús beat Independiente 5-1.
Sand scored 4 of their 5 goals !!!

Germán Denis was on the bench while Napoli (minus Lavezzi) were losing the game at Sampdoria 2-1.
With 10 minutes left in the game Denis went in and scored a golazo to tie the match in the last minute.

Posted from  United States