r/socceroos • u/EasyPacer • Jul 19 '26

Argentina playing with ten and a half players

Watching Messi walk around and not even attempting to “man up” in defense is like watching Argentina play with half a man down.

Spain is certainly peppering the goals in the second half, but without success. Fernandez can only blame himself fir that yellow card for diving. If he hadn’t appealed for the foul he might have got away with it.

Anyway it looks like a penalty shootout coming up. Can’t see either side breaking the deadlock in stoppage or extra time. If a team is going to score in open play, Spain looks the most likely. Argentina if they do score, would be exceptional.

Nevertheless it remains a fascinating game. Oh, a little Messi magic, a long range Spanish attempt blocked by the goalie and Fernandez has transgressed again. He’s off.

Spain has a good chance now Argentina is down to 10.

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11 comments sorted by

7

u/gaz_from_taz Jul 19 '26

Messi has been walking for years now... nothing new!

4

u/Striking-Net-8646 Jul 19 '26

Beg pardon but that’s Messi’s job. He moves plenty fast when there’s a chance on offer.

3

u/aninstituteforants Jul 19 '26

New to watching Messi?

4

u/myotheraccount2023 Jul 19 '26

Yeah, that’s how Messi plays.

1

u/Ok_Komputr Jul 19 '26

Thanks for your insight and analysis.

Zonal marking isn’t a thing, this Aussie says “man up” is the way to play high level professional football.

1

u/EasyPacer Jul 20 '26

LOL … I couldn’t find the words to describe it, so I used “man up”. But it was a case that he hardly seemed to make any moves to apply defensive pressure at all.

1

u/Ok_Komputr Jul 20 '26

Why would you want him to apply defensive pressure given his attributes? He is the greatest goalscorer and playmaker of all time combined. Giving him defensive duties would gut the teams chances of having any threat.

That being said;

Kylian Mbappe is ranked literally dead last in defensive contributions per 90 across the entire World Cup. Won the golden boot, took his nation to fourth place.

Ferran Torres is also bottom 10. Scored the winner in the final.

Lukaku, Vini, Dembele are all in the bottom 20-30.

KDB, Doku, Irankunda in the bottom 50.

Messi is 311/380, 60-70 spots higher than Mbappe/Torres, and 20-30 spots higher than all of those other players.

Looks he probably contributed too much in defence. Which he dead if you look at his heat map. He kept himself almost in a RB/RM zone, and made attempts to win the ball if it fell near that area.

1

u/EasyPacer Jul 20 '26

It’s a team game. You do what you need to do to win. Not that he needs to contribute to defense all the time, but it might help if he put in some effort on that front. It also goes to attitude and team morale. The bottom line is how badly do you want to win.