Quartet of the best – Newspaper Kommersant No. 208 (7409) dated 11/10/2022

In Group C of the World Cup opening on November 20 in Qatar, the main attraction is the Argentina national team, which finally looks very, very similar to the kind of team that has everything it takes to win the main football tournament. And the fight for another ticket to the playoffs, most likely, will be not so powerful, but with a lot of bright players in the Mexican and Polish teams. The Saudi Arabia national team looks like a clear outsider of the quartet.

For Lionel Messi, who is already 35 years old, the Qatari World Cup will be the fifth and, apparently, the last in his career. And a beautiful plot, the culmination of which will be the most valuable cup of all existing in sports, which finally secures the status of a legend of legends for Messi, before the start of the tournament, seems quite real before the start of the tournament.

The Argentina national team at any world championship is included in the favorite shortlist, one might say, by definition. Another thing is that in this century, that is, already in the “Messi era”, each of these competitions confirmed the assumption that it still has more flaws than many of its neighbors on the list, and the leader’s talent cannot compensate for them. So, it seems that right now, when Lionel Messi has come close to retirement age by football standards, the Argentines are terribly similar to the favorite without any significant reservations. Yes, judging by their results, by their game over the past couple of years, they are generally experiencing such a flourishing that they did not know even before the triumphant championships of 1978 and 1986.

The Argentina national team convincingly, without a single defeat, passed the difficult South American qualification. Last summer, she won the Copa America, and this summer she blew it to smithereens, 3-0, in a match called the Finalissima of the European champions of Italy. Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni enjoys incredible love from the fans and tremendous respect from the players, and their composition is amazingly balanced by the standards of this team.

In it, often, including before the previous world championship – the Russian 2018, in which the Argentina national team was cut off in the starting round of the play-offs on the future champions of the French, the “bias” in the direction of the attack hurt too much. In the Qatari version, it is also present, but minimal. Moreover, at a glance, such reliable rears, the strength of which, together with goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, are provided by seasoned Nicolas Otamendi and Nicolas Tagliafico, as well as young, but perfectly integrated into this brigade, Christian Romero with Lisandro Martinez, the Argentines did not have a long time ago.

Well, there is nothing to say about the rest of the lines. In the middle of the Argentina national team is a soldered and creative triangle of Rodrigo De Paul, Leandro Paredes and Giovani Lo Celso, in front is the genius Messi who, judging by the matches for PSG, is in good shape and has learned how to interact with him cool Lautaro Martinez. And a whole squad of celebrities from the “big” leagues and “big” clubs can help them.

The Mexican national team is a completely different case. How in the country whose honor she will defend, they relate to the work of her coach Gerardo Martino, one who has been to her home matches over the past few months could easily understand. A friendly chant of “Fuera Tata!” – “Tata, go away!” – using the nickname Martino, known to all Mexicans, became the norm during them.

Nothing strange. The Mexican national team, both in qualifying for the Qatari championship, and in friendly matches, showed tedious, like a toothache, football. There seems to be a lot of play in the opponent’s half, a large percentage of ball possession – but goals, or at least scoring chances, are born with a terrible creak. Hitting the opponent’s goal once, even if it is a small opponent, for example, Costa Ricans or Panamanians, is already for happiness. However, this does not mean that the Mexicans do not shine at the World Cup except for failure. If Martino manages to abandon his dogmas, to liberate the team, it is clearly capable of more than a fight for the second ticket to the playoffs from the group. Mexican football players have a whole ocean of experience, and their attacking squad is formed from interesting fighters with whom one should be careful and exceptional in terms of defense – Irving Lozano, Jesus Corona, Raul Jimenez.

All the advantages of the Polish national team usually come down to the presence of the best sniper of the decade, Robert Lewandowski, at the forefront, who this season, after moving from Bayern to Barcelona, ​​has retained his productivity and still scores an average of a goal per match. The main disadvantage of this team is usually reduced to the presence of Lewandowski – in the sense that they are too accustomed to relying on their genius of sniper art, too sharpened to deliver the ball to him, and a genius, if they play tenaciously with him, often has bad days. And there are no backup scenarios for such a case – hence the constant failures of the Poles in major tournaments.

Meanwhile, the selection of personnel that coach Cheslav Mikhnevich has at his disposal suggests an abundance of such scenarios. The Polish national team is full of football players who play or have played in the strongest leagues, and football players with a variety of functionalities. These are disciplined defenders, like Kamil Glik, and plowmen of the middle of the field, like Grzegorz Krychowiak and Karol Linetta, and attacking livestock with a creative streak, like Arkadiusz Milik. In theory, at least the Poles should be treated with respect not only by Mexicans, but also by Argentines.

Which, of course, cannot be said about the Saudi Arabian team. She is cut from local league players, and few among them have a biography record of even a short period of stay in Europe, such as, say, forward Salem Al-Dawsari, who managed to play for Villarreal, has. From this point of view, the Saudis of 2022 are no different from those Saudis who were destroyed – 5: 0 – by the Russian team in the match that opened the championship four years ago. However, there is still some difference between the two incarnations of this team. In 2018, for some reason, the Saudi team tried to play dashing, with the visor wide open, as if they had confused themselves with the Brazilian. This, on the contrary, is characterized by pragmatism raised to the absolute and a tactical scheme with the maximum saturation of all lines of defense. It is harder to play with such an outsider than with one who has forgotten that he is an outsider.

Alexey Dospekhov