He Selected Sub 23 that drives Javier Mascherano wants to go for the third… the third gold medal in the next Olympic Games that will take place this year in Paris. To achieve this objective, you must first obtain one of the two places granted by the South American Pre-Olympic Tournament that develops in Venezuela and that begins on Sunday afternoon.
Argentina is seeded in the Group B and will debut at 8 p.m. before Paraguay, a match that a few hours before the start also added TyC as an alternative to the DirecTV Sports broadcast. The adjustment in Public TV prevented the acquisition of the rights and the satellite signal had been left with exclusivity.
The meeting will take place at the Misael Delgado Sports Center, in the city of Valencia, 125 kilometers from Caracas. The referee will be the Brazilian Flavio de Souzaassisted by his compatriots Nailton Sousa and Luanderson Lima.
Group B is completed with Peru, Chile and Uruguay, which will be coached by Marcelo Bielsa. Only the first two will advance to the final quadrangular, which will assign the two tickets to Paris for the champion and runner-up of the competition.
Argentina, two-time Olympic champion for the gold medals of Athens 2004 y Beijing 2008will look for the Paris 2024 and for that he has an immediate objective: he will try to win his sixth title in a Pre-Olympic. With seven, Brazil is the top winner, while the albiceleste achieved it in Peru 1960 and 1964, Colombia 1980 and 2020 and Chile 2004.
Mascherano does not arrive with the complete squad: the sale of the defender Julian Malatini al Werder Bremen German and the new club’s refusal to give him up, the squad will have one less player than the rest. This situation constitutes an advantage, since the competition will have matches every three days and the coaches They will apply a greater rotation than usual.
The transfer of former Defensa y Justicia was made after the official list for the South American tournament was presented, the Bundesliga club refused to give him up and the AFA could not replace him since that possibility is only considered in case of injury.
Mascherano’s opportunity
The situation in which Mascherano takes office is particular. The former captain of the world runner-up team in Brazil 2014 and two-time Olympic champion suffered two tough setbacks as coach of the U-20 team.
Argentina was left out of the South American final phase in Colombia 2023 but also entered the World Cup in the category when Argentina took over the venue instead of Indonesia. In the top competition, however, they did not make it past the round of 16 after losing to Nigeria in San Juan.
After these poor performances, the coach resigned from the position of youth coach, but at the request of Claudio Tapia (president of AFA), Lionel Scaloni (coach of the senior team) and Bernardo Romeo (coordinator of youth teams) he agreed to continue in the position. .
It is clear that the “Jefecito” stakes a lot of his future in this tournament since outside of Paris 2024, a competition that could include Lionel Messi and Ángel Di María as senior players on the squad, would be a very difficult blow to assimilate.
The Argentine team played many preparatory friendlies (Japan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Lanús, Central Córdoba de Santiago del Quiero and Comunicaciones), it was taking shape and style and is made up of footballers from the local environment, with the exceptions of Athletico Paranaense defender Lucas Esquivel , the winger recently transferring to English Brighton Valentín Barco and the Atlanta United forward Thiago Almada, world champion in Qatar 2022.
The figures of the Sub 23 are Claudio “Diablito” Echeverri, who replaced the injured Pedro De la Vega, Almada, Barco, Nicolás Valentini, Federico Redondo and Luciano Gondou. The team would consist of: Leandro Brey; Joaquín García, Marco Di Césare, Nicolás Valentini and Valentín Barco; Cristian Medina, Juan Sforza and Ezequiel Fernández; Pablo Solari, Luciano Gondou and Thiago Almada.
Paraguay has 23
Led by Carlos Jara Saguier, Paraguay finished its preparation with a friendly that it lost to Uruguay by 4 to 1 at the Maldonado Campus, but its history speaks of a football with great strength, physical opulence and good aerial play.
The Guarani team features midfielders Diego Gomez (MLS Inter Miami), Enso Gonzalez (Wolverhampton) and three elements who play in Argentina: Ivan Leguizamon (San Lorenzo), Juan Jose Cardozo (Argentinos Juniors) and Marcelo Perez (Hurricane). . . . .
The 11 against Argentina would be: Angel Gonzalez; Alan Nunez, Ronaldo Dejesus, Gilberto Flores and Daniel Rivas; Fabrizio Peralta and Wilder Viera; Ivan Leguizamon, Enso Gonzalez and Marcelo Fernandez; Marcelo Perez. DT: Charles Jara Saguier.