Argentina denied reports Friday that players want coach Jorge Sampaoli sacked before their final World Cup group game against Nigeria after a humbling 3-0 defeat by Croatia. “It’s absolutely false,” read a statement from an Argentine team official. “All that has been said about a players’ meeting or anything else, it is all false,” the source added. Following Thursday’s match, there were reports in both local and international media of a rift between Argentina players and the coaching staff. It was also suggested that 1986 World Cup winner Jorge Burruchaga, the team’s technical director, would take charge for Tuesday’s must-win game against Nigeria. ALSO READ | FIFA World Cup 2018, Ahmed Musa brace against Iceland boosts Nigeria and Argentina “They want to sack Sampaoli, bring in Burruchaga and follow Spain’s example,” Ricardo Caruso Lombardi, who has coached several Argentine clubs, said on Thursday. Spain dismissed coach Julen Lopetegui on the eve of the World Cup after Real Madrid announced he would replace Zinedine Zidane at the Santiago Bernabeu following the tournament. Argentina suffered their heaviest first round group-stage defeat at the World Cup since 1958 against Croatia, leaving them on the brink of elimination after an opening 1-1 draw with Iceland.<doc-sep>In the early hours of Friday morning, Argentina’s World Cup squad returned to its training facility at Bronnitsy, a few miles outside Moscow, in almost complete silence, the mood funereal. The country’s World Cup hopes hang by a thread: not of winning it, but of merely qualifying for the knockout rounds, of avoiding immense embarrassment. A crushing 3-0 defeat to Croatia in Nizhny Novgorod on Thursday left Argentina reliant on others to stay alive in the tournament: the team’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, and his players must beat Nigeria in their final game, and hope that Iceland — the smallest nation to qualify for the World Cup — fails to beat Croatia. [Follow our coverage of Argentina vs. Nigeria] This is not how Argentina’s summer was supposed to go. Boasting the world’s best player, Lionel Messi, a phalanx of outstanding forwards and a coach with a fine record at the international level, Argentina arrived in Russia with hopes of going one better than it had in Brazil four years ago, when it lost in the final, and winning its first World Cup since 1986. So, what has gone wrong, and what can be done about it? Does it make sense to put all of the blame on the coach? In his postmatch news conference on Thursday, Sampaoli could barely raise his eyes to face his interrogators. On half a dozen occasions, maybe more, he made it clear that only one person should take responsibility for the fact that Argentina was now on the brink of elimination: him.<doc-sep>There has been a lot of talk about the performances of the big, favoured teams such as Brazil and Spain in the group stages. Their bluntness in front of goal has copped a fair amount of criticism from pundits and fans alike. I am not jumping on that bandwagon. National teams come together for a very limited amount of time in a calendar season. Players who play for different clubs, in different systems and different styles all come together and have to quickly work as a collective to fetch results. The key then is to adapt early to the style that the coach wants to play. The collective that can adapt best is the collective that will do well in the long run. In the case of both Brazil and Spain, their performances have been panned without perhaps giving enough credit to their opposition. Against Switzerland -- a team that historically they have struggled against -- Brazil’s famed attackers faced a Red defensive wall. On Friday, it took two very late goals to give them the three points. In Spain’s case, the wall was Iranian. This has been the trend of the World Cup. Underdog teams have come together as a collective fast, and adapted quickly. Against Costa Rica, Brazil struggled to create anything for a majority of the game. The prime reason for this was their opponents’ superb defensive organisation. The Costa Ricans had eight or nine players regularly parading around their box, and all of them parked in their own half. In this case, it becomes extremely difficult as an attacking team to break down the spaces and create something. Spain struggled against Iran in similar fashion. Despite racking up the highest number of passes for any team in the first half of that game, they had zero shots on target and had created almost next to nothing. In fact, the first chance of that game fell to Iran, and, my feeling is, if the shot had flown into the net rather than onto the side netting, Iran may have taken the three points and left Spain staring down the barrel. As it was, that didn’t happen. But it illustrates the points I’m trying to make. Defensive organisation, a prime job of any coach, has been put on a pedestal in this World Cup. The credit for Iran’s tactical nous must go to Carlos Queiroz, their coach; the team has adapted to his style perfectly. The question though is: Will Iran be using this same style at the AFC Asian Cup next January when they play against opposition significantly lower than them? Obviously not. They will be expected to attack. And that can sometimes create problems. Take the example of Iceland, a footballing nation that has within three years become famous for its resilient, dogged defensive collective structure. In any game they go into, they are usually playing counter attacking football, happy to absorb the pressure before converting the few chances that fall their way. Against Nigeria, though, they went in as favourites -- Nigeria being the youngest team at the World Cup -- and the onus to attack fell on them. It didn’t sit well with them, and, despite having a few creative players in their squad, they were finding it difficult to break their opponents down. Furthermore, the desire to go upfront meant their organisation at the back suffered and they conceded two goals that, in normal circumstances, they perhaps would never have. The demands of international football are very different to club-level football. At this level, the highest level, players are tuned to switch on and off to different strategies at different times. They should be prepared to shift to whatever the manager demands. And most training-ground work in the national side revolves around such scenarios. Argentina, disastrously, haven’t managed to do that yet in this World Cup. Despite boasting a glut of individual talent, they have failed as a collective for Jorge Sampaoli. The tendency when teams lose is to blame the manager, and, predictably, Sampaoli has taken a huge amount of flak for his team selections and strategy. But the truth also is that Argentina’s players, whenever they have been given an opportunity, have failed to justify his faith in them. The group stages of any major global event are bound to be low-scoring, as bigger teams are a little cagier around smaller opponents. This comes out of a lack of team chemistry -- which is still building -- and also a simple desire to just get the job done and go through to the next round. The knockouts of the FIFA World Cup will definitely be a more open affair, and I’m looking forward to it. [The author represented India through 1998-2011. He is an AFC A-licensed coach and heads the Football Players’ Association of India]<doc-sep>
Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli came under the scanner from Sergio Aguero and the Argentine media after their 3-0 loss to Croatia here on Thursday. Having set the team up in his preferred three-man backline, as opposed to the four defenders used in their opener, Sampaoli played some players out of position in defence. Full backs Gabriel Mercado and Nicolas Tagliafico accompanied Nicolas Otamendi as central defenders while wide midfielders Eduardo Salvio and Marcos Acuna were slotted in as wing-backs. Javier Mascherano, Enzo Perez and Maximiliano Meza were overshadowed in midfield by the Croatia trio of Marcelo Brozovic, Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic. That made Sampaoli’s decision to keep Ever Banega on the bench seem ever more mysterious and produced a performance that was in complete contrast to the high-tempo game he had perfected with the Chile national team. READ | Ahmed Musa brace against Iceland boosts Nigeria and Argentina Aguero hit out at Sampaoli after the coach claimed at the post-match press conference that the players failed to adapt to his tactics. “Let him say what he wants,” Aguero told a TV reporter. “I feel anger and sadness, although there is still a chance,” he said. Argentine journalists here too weren’t pleased with the coach. “Nobody expected this result. It’s a surprise for all of us. He played with his favourite system, with three behind, something that didn’t happen against Iceland. When it became 1-0 to Croatia, maybe it was the time to put Aguero and Higuain up front and not take out Aguero,” said Argentine midfielder Hernan Pablo Losada, a former player with Anderlecht who is an analyst for the Belgian football website Voetbalkrant. READ | FIFA World Cup 2018: ‘Neymar can’t take sole responsibility for Brazil’ Francisco Javier Ali of Vermouth Deportivo too blamed Sampaoli. “The coach is responsible because he experimented on the field. He played one team against Iceland and today, he played a different side. We saw the team had not done enough work on the coach’s plans. Argentina were flying in air like a piece of paper,” he said. “I believe there is a problem within the team because of what Aguero said. If he was in agreement with the coach, he wouldn’t have said what he did,” said Ali. Despite a poor qualifying campaign, Losada said hopes had still been high going into the tournament. “When you have Lionel Messi in your team and players like Aguero, (Gonzalo) Higuain, (Paulo) Dybala, (Angel) Di Maria, playing in the top teams of the world’s top leagues, of course you expect a lot more than possibly being eliminated in the group stage. You expect that this generation of players can finally get a prize for this nation. But now, we have to depend on other results.” READ | Mats Hummels unlikely to play against Sweden, says Germany coach Loew Losada added that even if Argentina manage to make it past the group stages, Sampaoli’s job is likely to come under threat. “Today’s performance was so disastrous that many of us think he will be relieved of his duties after the World Cup. We all have the feeling that the connection between the players and the trainer is not perfect. Especially when we go one goal behind, there is no reaction from the players. That’s something very hard to change. In tournaments like the World Cup, team spirit is so important,” he said.