Here we go

2 days till we see Albicelestes again.

Jose Sosa is injured. Carrizo hasn't practiced for a while and is, at the moment, excluded from the team for friendly against Norway.

According to Olé, Lavezzi, Garay, Coloccini, Cata Díaz, Ustari, Lucho González and Maxi Rodríguez had already arrived at camp, while Burdisso, Zanetti, Gaby Milito, Sergio Romero, Insúa, Gago, Saviola, Tevez, Mascherano, Cristian Ledesma and Lionel Messi are on their way and will arrive today.

Noticed Tevez and no Milito? I didn't know till this morning. Been busy past week... This is obviously a good news. :D

For those that didn't know, Ezequiel Lavezzi isn't very tall either. So now Basile has NO tall forward, or in other word, no one is an ideal target person. Due to Rooney's injury, the Tevez-Rooney duo hasn't been realized in ManU. Perhaps Basile got more experiment planned for the short-short combination? Well, if Alex Ferguson can't experiment for us, let's do it ourselves.

5 defenders, Coloccini is also a defender. Can be used as outside mid but very defensive. Garay is almost guaranteed to get pitch time, my guess is that Cata (Daniel) Diaz will also see action as a CB. Gaby Milito is also a dedicated CB, leaving Zanetti, Burdisso and Coloccini as our fullback choices.

In the midfield, we have Mascherano, Gago and Ledesma all defensive midfielders. One of them, or 2, will occupy the holding midfielder position(s). Since Sosa is injured, Lucho, Maxi and Lavezzi are our 3 outside midfielder choices. Lavezzi's natural position is alien to Albicelestes. This guy isn't a typical outside support midfielder we generally deploy within the 4-3-1-2. He's more of an attacking winger or submerged striker type of players. In other words, he usually plays wider than even Lucho...

If Basile brings out his 4-3-1-2 again, the positions should be filled like:

GK: Ustari, Romero

CB: Garay, Diaz, Milito
FB: Burdisso, Zanetti, Coloccini

DM: Mascherano, Gago, Ledesma
OM: Maxi, Lavezzi, Lucho
CAM: Insua, Maxi

FW: Messi, Tevez, Saviola, Lavezzi

Without a target person, it's hard to say whether our forwards will be effective against the height of the Norwegians. Notable current Norwegian internationals include: Arne Riise, Martin Andresen, John Carew, Morten Pedersen, Daniel Braaten and Steffen Iversen.

Norwegian coach Åge Hareide had club success in all 3 scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark and Sweden). When he was coaching Rosenborg B.K, their CL matches were almost all played with 4-3-3. The attacking mentality is in their blood, remember Sweden 3 up against Denmark and kept on attacking till it became 3-3?

For Euro 2008 qualifiers, Norway plays away against Moldova on 8 September, and then home against Greece 4 days later.

The following came from Wiki:
Norway had a successful start to to the Euro 2008 qualifiers, breaking a run of eight games without victory. Norway won 4-1 in Hungary, their largest away win in a qualifier since October 2001 after a string of "amateurish mistakes" by the hosts, before beating Moldova 2-0 at home to top the group after two games. However on 7 October, Norway were beaten away 1-0 by Greece, making their group closer again, and with a 1-2 loss to Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team and a 2-2 tie with Turkey in the two first qualifying matches in 2007, Norway lost important points. The team improved with two home ground 4-0 wins in a row, against Malta and Hungary in early June, and is now on fourth place in its group, five points behind first place Greece and with the same number of points as second and third places Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey.

If we get shut down in the air (which probably will happen), we'll have to depend on ground touching football to break down the Norwegian defense. In 4-3-1-2, the CAM is the only playmaker. We saw how Brazil contained our forwards to shut down Roman, the same might happen again, except Insua is probably much easier to shut down. Keep in mind, they don't need to actually contain the CAM. They just need to contain the forwards and press on the CAM, then it becomes very difficult to move the ball.

Since there are 2 dedicated attacking wingers on the list, and 3 DM, I'm letting my hope rise again to see 4-2-3-1... we could go like this:

GK: Ustari, Romero

CB: Garay, Diaz, Milito
FB: Burdisso, Zanetti, Coloccini

DM: Mascherano, Gago, Ledesma
WM: Maxi, Lavezzi, Lucho
CAM: Insua, Maxi

FW: Messi, Tevez, Saviola, Lavezzi

Then of course, it could also be 3-4-1-2. In which case, the 3 defenders should all be able to play more central roles and the 2 wingers must retract to defensive positions when opponent has possession.

GK: Ustari, Romero

CB: Garay, Milito
FB: Burdisso, Diaz

CM: Mascherano, Gago, Ledesma
WM: Maxi, Zanetti, Lavezzi, Coloccini, Lucho
CAM: Insua, Maxi

FW: Messi, Tevez, Saviola, Lavezzi

Another possible strategy is 4-4-2. If Basile isn't sured of using the CAM-OM setup or the wingers setup, he might go to 4-4-2 so he could evaluate each player at their natural positions. 4-4-2 is pretty defensive, especially without clearly defining attacking elements.

Last, we should also consider the possibility of Messi being tested at a midfield position.