By Gerardo Romero
Jun 21, 2024, 08:25 AM EDT
The technical director of the Argentina national team, Lionel Scaloni, could not help but complain about the poor condition of the grass at the Mercedes-Benz stadium in the city of Atlanta, the scene where they faced the Canadian national team for the opening match. of the Copa América 2024 held in the United States; The field changed from artificial to real grass a few days ago and given this fact, the strategist assured that it was not suitable to host an official match.
These statements were made by Scaloni during the press conference after the 2-0 victory that the Albiceleste team and current Copa América champions recorded over the North American team, in a duel where the Canadians demonstrated an impressive level of play in the first half. .
“With all due respect, thank goodness we won, because otherwise it would have seemed like an excuse. We’ve known for 7 months that we have to play here and they changed the grass two days ago. The stadium is beautiful and with the synthetic grass it has to be spectacular, but it is not suitable for these players,” he said.
Scaloni maintained that although it looked pretty good from above, it really affected the teams with the passing speed of the center backs and made the option of filtering passes impossible; This was because the playing field made them insecure and therefore they had to change the entire tactical strategy they had planned for the match.
“The important thing is that, no matter what, the team always responds in one way or another and that leaves you calm. Regarding the negative, I would like to analyze well the (goal) situations that they have had to make decisions. In reality, we played a match according to how the field was and what the rival left us.” Scaloni concluded.
Despite this, Lionel Scaloni managed to break, together with the Argentine team, a negative streak that they had suffered since the 2016 Centenario edition of the Copa América; The Albiceleste team had not won in a continental tournament or in a World Cup since that tournament also held in the United States because in Russia 2018 they tied against Iceland 1-1 and in the 2019 Copa América they lost to Colombia 2-0.
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