WC qualifiers November

This Columbian team could be dangerous.

	17.11.2007	Argentina	vs	Bolivia
	20.11.2007	Columbia	vs	Argentina

News

1. Argentina U-20 coach Hugo Tocalli had resigned. More details from Ole. This is confirmed. Many of us saw this coming. Check my article in August.

2. There's rumor that Basile will resigned from NT coaching position due to health problem. Further more, it's said that Grondona will bring up Simeone if Basile cannot continuous with the WC campaign. Read more on this.

WOW

I cannot fucking believe this, but it made a whole lot of sense.

Today, Dragonlord posted the following on bigsoccer forum. (click on the title to go to the actual page).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pints Even Forlan was quoted as saying Roman has no right to bash his team and coach. And they were friends. I think your allegiance to Roman is blinding other sides of this story for you.

Actually, that's not true! Today the narrators from Spain made clear what really happened with Riquelme. It seems that, besides the b*tching to the press, he did not like Forlan AT ALL.

He went as far as he telling the rest of the team to NOT PASS Forlan the ball!! Can you imagine that? Your playmaker telling the team to not give the ball to your top striker, just because you dont like him??????? That's absurd, and unfortunately, is vintage riquelme-style.

Eventually a player "ratted him" out to Pellegrini, and that was the begining of the end. Also, a lot of the argentines in the team that were conspiring in this affair were also shown the door.

This is the reason Forlan was sold. He was still a point of contention in the dressing room. This is also the reason why Atletico Madrid chose not to buy Riquelme. Apparently someone found out at the last minute about the 'history' behind these players, and Atletico duly stopped the transfer.

anyway, more money and talent wasted

I'm not convinced by Villar's win over Barza this past weekend. Many of the connections were shaky but luckily went through, and Barza showed nothing more than some individualities. Not to mention 2 of the Villar goals were PK. I'm not saying those shouldn't of been called, but they were calls could or could not had been made.

Torrent for Villarreal Vs. Barcelona match.

Dragonlord posted the following on BS last night:

I will get the name of the guys discussing the topic on spanish radio, but anyone that was listening to the first half between Villareal v Barcelona last weekend should have heard.

some thoughts

Torrent for the Venezuela match.

Let's start from the back line.

Left back position is obviously the weakest link of the entire formation (lack of #9 sits right behind that). Heinze is not only not very good on the offensives, he has also been prone to injuries since his misfortune before 06'WC. So from both productivity and reliability stand points, Heinze is not an ideal left back for the NT.

Some people think Burdisso could play all defender positions. That's not true, and clearly demonstrated in Venezuela match. He doesn't position very well as fullback, and he's not natural to the left side. Several times our beautiful possessions ended on Burdisso. Not only that, he also allowed some dangerous openings. Nicolas Burdisso is a terrific center back or right back (for the left hammer right anvil way we play), but not the solution to our left back problem.
He's ok from the injury. He was unconscious for a few seconds though.

Milito has decent header and can defend in the box very well. His problem is the lack of speed, which means he couldn't cover a large zone. He's actually quite aggressive/offensive, but unfortunately too slow to be a good leftback. Not to mention, we need a wingback...

Daniel Diaz did not impress me. He's also 28 years old so not a real future possibility. He was not really tested since Venezuela didn't go right after Burdisso's injury, but like Burdisso, Diaz did not provide the necessary width on the left.

Now, right back. Zanetti is becoming irreplaceable. He's now also taking care of the right wing due to Maxi's problems. Zanetti is OLD AS SHIT! We cannot keep relying on him, let alone making him shoulder more responsibilities.

Ibarra was pretty good at right back. He's very experienced and he makes the correct decisions. His pass to Tevez was brilliant, and he made quite a few good defensive moves. The yellow card was a necessary foul too. It's too bad Ibarra is 33 years old.

Demichelis is a welcome addition to the CB lineup. He plays LCB for Bayern so we know he can do both sides. This guy is solid, and we still have Burdisso, Milito and soon Gonzalo Rodriguez in the lineup. The CB position is pretty filled up. Few others might deserve a try but it's not necessary.

If we could find 2 good fullbacks, this defense can win the world cup.

Venezuela took the initiatives on several occasions. They pulled out some high class offensives but were ineffective in top 1/3 of the field. On defense, Argentina went into a 4-3-3, alot of midfield disruptions ensured the ball was rarely carried by opponents to striking distances. However, this also has to do with the way Venezuela was setup. They played a 4-5-1 with just Maldonado up front. We had 2 solid CB marking him, making it impossible for Maldonado to open himself up.

Against Venezuela, Basile pulled out practically 3 defensive midfielders. Even when he switched Ibarra off and dropped Zanetti back, it was Gago that came on so there remained to be 3 defensive midfielders. It looked good on defense, but these weren't offensively minded players, and didn't provide enough support when attacking.

Gago is probably the most offensive of these DMs. He doesn't have the touch and control of Riquelme, but he's definitely a playmaker option.
We have other offensive wingers even if Maxi couldn't adjust himself to suit this team, D'Alessandro for example, is probably worth a try.
However, I do think Gago can provide a better balance on the right, especially if we use a more aggressive fullback than Zanetti. He has better distribution than either Mascherano or Cambiasso, and he's better than Cambiasso in defense. What Gago needs to do is to be a little more conservative, he makes some dangerous choices.

Riquelme is the best enganche we've got. It's simple as that. There's no one else can cope with Messi better. Some of the works between those 2 were from another world.

But Roman did not make the same kind of passes to Tevez.
Technically, Tevez and Messi are similar so one should hit them the same way too. AKA. low and tight. IMO the reason Tevez doesn't get the balls like Messi is because he plays on the left more. Our offense leans left, so left forward is more vertically aligned with Roman. This means there would be more defenders between Tevez and Roman, making direct ground passes more difficult to Calito than for Messi.

The solution to that is still width on the left. Provide indirect routes to reach Tevez.

Even if Tevez did get the right passes, he still wouldn't of been very effective from where he played. He didn't have a target to cross to.
We didn't have a target person, so the middle of the box was empty. Over and over, the ball reached Tevez high up on the wing, then he had no target to hit, ended up sending the ball back. That's frustrating to watch, and as much as I've supported the 2 shorties experiments, I believe we're still better off with a real target player.

It's not to say I'm losing faith in Tevez though. In fact, I think he made the right choices to turn the ball back from the left wing. When Messi switched position with him, he tried to cut into the middle and was unsuccessful. Tevez's choices at least allowed us to retain possession.

Denis offered that target person option to certain extends. Once he came on, there was clearly a person to hit in the middle. His positioning was also very nice so he got a few very good chances within the 10 minutes he played. Haven said that, Denis' finish was EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTING. Everybody is nervous the first time playing on NT, but a professional player like Denis should of known opportunities like that don't come very often. He had 2 beautiful breakaways, one of which there was no excuse for not hitting the goal and he managed to shoot it wide...

Speaking of which. I get more impressed by Messi every time. He went out of his way again and again to set his teammates up. It's true he didn't take the chances, but scoring at that point would do nothing more than humiliating the host. Instead, he choose to move on after reaching scoring position, and forced his way to set up both Tevez and Denis (did the same for Aguero against Chile too). That IMO is more difficult to do than shooting, and it shows the big heart and unbelievable unselfishness from Messi.

Another player satisfying to watch was Mascherano. Mascherano accomplishes his defensive duties like no other, but even more impressive was his ability to produce runs and draw fouls. He's done that many times for Liverpool, and now he's done that on the NT as well. He also scored a goal when playing for River from the same concept. That's one of his specialties, make no doubt.
Mascher was send down the wing late against Chile. It was a stupid move by Basile. Can't believe it takes trials and error for our NT coach to see that...

Last I want to mention Cambiasso. Cuchu has his qualities. He works hard, and knows when to push and when to defend. Problem is, he does neither very well. On teams like Inter, there are plenty garbageman to pick up trash he left off, but on our NT that's not the case. The ball must be processed precisely inside the box for us to score because we don't have a #9 right now (unless Crespo comes back but how long would that last). Cambiasso is a difficult to utilize element eventhough he had done ok at that position in the past.

There are plenty choices for outside midfielders. D'alessandro, Almiron, Zabelata, Ledesma, etc. We need to try them out, and focus on finding fullbacks and target players.

Messi is a GOD

There's some serious problem with our left back Since Maxi's form isn't ideal, Zanetti becomes an option for right wing, so he's not there to take care the left back substitute job.

Burdisso didn't look good on the left. THe head injury he suffered looked very serious. He was unconscious when carried out, with a neck bracer. I hope he's ok because he's an important option for CB.

Milito can compete for the LCB position but he's also useless at left edge. Out of the 3 Heinze probably has the most experience playing fullback, but he's far from ideal. We really need a wingback, or 2.

Gago looked good. Tevez not at his best, Denis blew his chance. Demichelis very solid. Cambiasso is probably dispensable. Everybody else did well. Messi is a god!

Torrent in a bit
Review later

Reminder

We play Venezuela tomorrow 8:40pm. That's UTC-4, so same as eastern time in US.

Unfortunately, GolTV will be airing other stupid qualifier, again. So use livefooty for shitty quality webcast. I'll have torrent posted here afterwards.

VAMOS!

quick words

I'm Lazy.

I'll write a combined review of the 2 matches after we played Venezuela. There are just little too much shit going on in my pathetic life right now, I can't sit here and type out a whole paragraph without being bothered.

I do have couple words wanted to get out of my chest:

1. The Tevez-Messi combo still hasn't been functioning properly. Too much hesitation INSIDE the box, our forward players still don't have the necessary understanding between each other.

2. Heinze is not ideal. I know he looked good and got to the ball many times on the wing, but he lacked the ability to process the chances he received. Right side was more active even AFTER Maxi was switched off and Mascherano was playing winger. ( Didn't see that coming did you? IMO, Mascher did ok on the wing too, for a guy that doesn't know how to cross that is :D )

We also had both of our fullbacks playing non-ideal positions. Heinze was playing wingback while Zanetti playing almost purely defensively...


3. Second half was a big waste of time. They were obviously saving juice for Venezuela, but the timing of substitutions were horrid. If they wanted to save some gas that badly, should of put both Aguero and Saviola on earlier. Aguero went on too late, so he hurried on every chance he got, ended up having alot of good looking touches but got absolutely nothing out of them. Saviola... I didn't even get a good look at him.

4. Throwing Gago at DM and pushing Mascher into attack was such a weird choice, but seemed to be Basile's favorite move ATM.

I guess all coaches think alike. Rafael Benitez also did the samething with Mascherano, and had gotten some good results from it. A DM is generally unmarked. When he pushes, he creates disturbance in the opponent midfield. If only Mascher could distribute a little better... Drawing fouls is cool, but we can't afford the dude getting hurt.

There's nothing worth saving against Venezuela, so perhaps we'll see more of a 90min game on Wednesday.

Again, sorry for dodging the review, I'll make it up after the 2nd match.

Match torrent is here:
Argentina vs Chile English commentator Torrent

Twenty Years

Step One


Quilmes 1998 - The funniest movie is here. Find it

Local players for qualifier

5 names:

German Denis (Independenti) ST
Fernando Belluschi (River Plate) Winger
Juan Pablo Carrizo (River Plate) GK
Hugo Ibarra (Boca Juniors) FB
Daniel Montenegro (Independenti) Winger

The 25 players enlisted are for both qualifiers against Chile and Venezuela. First match on 13.October at 5:30pm, second one in Maracaibo on the 16th.

We got some wingers and forward backups with this local player list. I don't see how Denis will get to play with the current form Tevez and Messi are in though. And even if the 2 have problems, there are still Saviola and Aguero waiting for the call!

And other thing I just had to ask, WTF IS IBARRA DOING HERE? Is this Basile's great white hope for fullback? The dude is 33!