Argentina‘s dance goes on, as their fans sing, all the way to Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal match against Croatia and then potentially a shot at eternal glory in Sunday’s final, or to a melancholic end to the Lionel Messi-era in Saturday’s third-place consolation game.
Barring the gateway to glory are the very opponents against whom, in a perverse kind of way, this whole unlikely adventure became a possibility.
Argentina met Croatia in the second group-stage game of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The Albiceleste were coached at the time by Jorge Sampaoli — highly rated, highly talented, highly volatile. It always looked like a bad fit. Argentina lacked the players, and especially the defenders, to execute Sampaoli’s trademark dynamic high pressing game.
Croatia took them apart. And in the closing stages of a 3-0 win, Sampaoli stood on the touchline swearing at the opposing players. It was an awful image, and a moment when Argentina’s football association began to wonder whether it was a mistake giving him a long-term contract.
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Things improved later in the tournament, with Argentina’s experienced players taking on some of the responsibility. They beat Nigeria to make it into the knockouts, and were not humiliated in a round-of-16 defeat to eventual champions France. But — although it would cost them — a change had to be made. Sampaoli was fired and, initially on a caretaker basis with the undeniable virtue of coming cheap, Lionel Scaloni was named to replace him.
Now, more than four years later, here we are. Scaloni has taken Argentina to their first senior title since 1993 — when they won last year’s Copa America — and now to a World Cup semifinal.
It has been quite a promotion for someone with no previous senior coaching experience, who was on staff in 2018 in the relatively lowly position of an observer of potential future opponents.
But experience can sometimes count for little and it was Scaloni who celebrated a victory over a far more prestigious counterpart on Friday. Argentina’s quarterfinal win over Netherlands and coach Louis van Gaal may have only come from a penalty shootout, but bar the late Dutch rally at the end of normal time, Scaloni’s men had the match under control.
It ended up being a game where the less experienced coach emerged with considerable credit. A coach has three main responsibilities: select the team, determine the strategy and establish the emotional tone in which the work takes place. Emotionally Argentina responded extremely well after losing their lead in normal time in such dramatic fashion; they shrugged it off and were by far the better side in extra time.
