The Argentine national team faces a great test in the CONMEBOL Copa América Brasil 2019, when they confront Qatar on Sunday, June 23, at the Arena do Gremio in Porto Alegre, with the mission of achieving a victory that will allow them to advance to the quarterfinals of the oldest tournament of national teams in the world.
Messi and the others immediate goal is to avoid group stage elimination from the tournament. "It would be madness if we couldn't get past the group when three pass practically," Messi warned after Argentina's 1-1 tie against Paraguay on Wednesday in the second round of Group B.
"We knew it wasn't going to be easy (...) everything is very similar and today we can't just win with the jersey", said the Barcelona player.
Improvements Scaloni is looking for
As in the attack, Scaloni seeks to improve the functioning of the midfield. Putting the brakes on a team from Catarà that managed to complicate Paraguay and lost just enough to Colombia is a task that cannot be postponed.
Leandro Paredes and Guido Rodriguez with Giovani Lo Celso more advanced would be responsible for winning in the middle and clean pass the ball to the front, in search of Messi, 'Kun' Aguero and Lautaro Martinez.
Qatar, with nothing to lose
Contrary to the Argentinean team, Qatar puts calm before calm. The Asian champions want to dress up once again as a party pooper.
His coach, the Spaniard Felix Sanchez, expects "a very hard match", but warns that he does not forget that his team arrives with chances of passing to the quarterfinals of the Copa America.
"We know it's going to be tremendously difficult because everyone knows Argentina's potential," said the TD, without losing the strength to warn that his team will go out to fight the classification.
Possible line-ups:
Argentina: Franco Armani - Milton Casco, Germán Pezzella, Nicolás Otamendi, Nicolás Tagliafico - Leandro Paredes, Guido RodrÃguez, Giovani Lo Celso - Leonel Messi, Sergio Agüero and Lautaro Martínez or Paulo Dybala.
Coach: Lionel Scaloni
Qatar: Saad Al Sheeb - Pedro Miguel Correia, Bassam Al Rawi, Tarek Salman, Karim Hassan Abdel - Karim Boudiaf, Abdulaziz Hatem, Boualem Khoukhi - Hasan Khalid, Almoez Ali, Akram Afif.
Coach: Felix Sánchez.
Referee: Julio Bascuñán (Chile)
Time: 4 pm (Local Time)
Stadium: Arena do Gremio (Porto Alegre)
