Group D (Argentina, Croatia, Iceland, Nigeria)

I'm wary of Mandzukic's aerial threat. Nigeria showed weakness in this area in most of the friendly matches. I hope they have ironed this out in training.
 
padr81 said:
Argentina have big issues but I think they'll qualify in the end. Aguero takes the penalty they go ahead and Messi has had a solid 6/10 games and everything is rosy.
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Yeah, the opening game(s) doesn't always work as a reliable predictor of the final outcome. Remember how great it was watching Argentina the first few weeks in 2010 - and how utterly pathetically they capitulated against Germany. Go back even further, to 1990, and they were rubbish throughout, but still reached the final. I agree with you - I think they'll qualify.
 
Nice to see Rebic and Kramaric making the starting 11. They are two of the three Croatian players I'm most looking forward to watching alongside Brozovic who I can't see playing too much with them having the midfield options they have.
 
Our coach is prick. Imagine Mikel as your No. 10? Fecking Mikel!
 
Don't understand how Argentina can be so rubbish.

Dybala, Icardi, Messi, Higuain, Di Maria, Pavon and Aguero is an immense set of attacking players.
 
Our squad is the worst since I started watching us. Not a single too player.
 
Cee90 said:
Don't understand how Argentina can be so rubbish.

Dybala, Icardi, Messi, Higuain, Di Maria, Pavon and Aguero is an immense set of attacking players.
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Di Maria is bad nowadays, very little effort and intelligence
Icardi is not at the WC because you don‘t need 3 CF
Dybala plays the exact same role as Messi and clashes with him on the pitch
Pavon is promising, he should start
Higuain is good as a physical sub I suppose, except for finals
Aguero dunno, scored a great goal today and Argentina‘s game is clearly not tailored around his strenghts

I thought Argentina was okay today, certainly not as disappointing as France and they had a worse opponent.

I can‘t see Iceland winning against Croatia or scoring more than Argentina against Nigeria. I like Finnbogason and think Gylfi is quality, but I don‘t think they have the offensive mindset to survive in this tough group. Their structure looked bad at counter attacks.
 
giorno said:
Yes, cross after cross after cross...for Aguero and Banega, against 6 Iceland players the shortest of which is 1.90m
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You do know that Messi could also cross the ball on the ground, right?
 
Great to get a draw against Argentina. Argentina were a bit arrogant in the build up to this, which suits us perfectly like against England in the Euros. I can see Iceland getting something against Nigeria but fear Crotatia are too much for us.
 
Why are Argentina not playing 5-2-3?
Caballero
Salvio -Fazio -Otamendi -Rojo - Tagliafico
Banega - Mascherano
Messi - Aguero -Pavon

Keep Messi close to the final third.
 
Hoping for Argentina to pull through, but I honestly doubt it at this point. Though it all depends on how sampaoli adjusts or Messi bounces back.


I think that if Sampaoli figures out the right way for argentina at this point its all luck.
 
I had the group like this:
Croatia
Nigeria
Argentina
Iceland

but now I'm kind of doubting whether Nigeria can even avoid finishing last
 
I am sad. We played so disjointed. I just hope we can pull together some results and play with conviction so that we don't finish last.
 
Adisa said:
Our squad is the worst since I started watching us. Not a single too player.
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It's not our players, it's our coach. The Ekong pen was due to poor defensive instructions from the coach, same with the own goal. Also I think our formation and playing players in the wrong position doesn't help. But over all, trying the long ball over the top with Ighalo was a bad idea.
 
Twingatz said:
It's not our players, it's our coach. The Ekong pen was due to poor defensive instructions from the coach, same with the own goal. Also I think our formation and playing players in the wrong position doesn't help. But over all, trying the long ball over the top with Ighalo was a bad idea.
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I thought that was supposed to be his bread and butter. He was largely good at that at Watford.
Don't think we need to over analyse the loss. We lost to a team with much better individual players.
 
Twingatz said:
It's not our players, it's our coach. The Ekong pen was due to poor defensive instructions from the coach, same with the own goal. Also I think our formation and playing players in the wrong position doesn't help. But over all, trying the long ball over the top with Ighalo was a bad idea.
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Not only that, defensively we were suspect yesterday. Playing with a midfield 2 and little too wide in general, instead of your wingers coming in empty spaces behind Modrić and Kovačić they stayed wide near the line.
 
Adisa said:
I thought that was supposed to be his bread and butter. He was largely good at that at Watford.
Don't think we need to over analyse the loss. We lost to a team with much better individual players.
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After seeing the performance from Mexico vs Germany, we shouldn't accept this mentality at all. If you go into a game thinking that you will never get anything out of that game. You need to go into every game feeling or knowing that you have a chance to win, otherwise you will lose. We could have beaten Croatia if we used the right players from our squad. Also if we had a manager with some intestinal fortitude not saying in his briefs that "this is a learning experience" and having a defeatist attitude.
 
I don't understand why Dybala and Messi can't play in the same team. Let them both hover behind Aguero. The interchangability between them all sounds delicious.
 
Can still see Argentina beating Nigeria.

Don't think it's a cert at all Iceland will win tomorrow or get something v Croatia although Croats might make some changes of course. Iceland is better at getting results when they put men behind the ball.

They struggled to win a lot of their easier matches in qualifying.
 
The meltdown will be epic can't wait. Messi will retire again and we'll laugh our arse of this for some days. Please Iceland make it happen. :lol:
 
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