With World Cup Dream Intact, Argentina Turns Focus To Spain With Confidence

ATLANTA STADIUM — Watching Argentina’s coach speak the day before his team produced one of the most epic semifinal comebacks in World Cup history, it was impossible not to think that Lionel Scaloni was trying to soften the potential blow for the soccer-crazy nation’s almost 47 million citizens.

La Albiceleste has been so successful under the unassuming 48-year-old — winning a World Cup and two Copa América crowns in the last five years — that the prospect of losing has become almost incomprehensible to most fans. Maybe even to Argentina’s players, who never seem to know when they’re beaten.

Scaloni, the thinking went, had to be the realist among the dreamers.

And then, midway through the press conference that followed Wednesday’s win — a victory that will see Argentina face Spain in Sunday’s World Cup final just outside New York City — he revealed that he and his staff had begun scouting La Roja before actually advancing to the championship match.

“We’ve analyzed the game a little bit,” Scaloni said of Spain’s 2-0 win over France in the other semi, which was played in Dallas on Tuesday. “It’s a great team. I would say they deserved to win that semifinal. They played very well. They beat a team that I thought was very difficult to beat, and they beat them squarely.

“We also saw them at that point as a potential rival,” he continued. “And now we’ve analyzed them a bit more.”

It was a low-key astonishing admission. Every half-decent coach, in any sport at any level, implores their players never to look ahead as a matter of course. Control what you can. Focus on only the task in front of you, or risk getting sidetracked.

Yet there was Scaloni, already preparing for a title bout that might never come. It’s as if he knew, having watched his players grind their way to victory at every turn since being hired to lead his country in 2018 — not least in the 2022 World Cup final, when they squandered two leads against a more talented Les Bleus squad and yet still found a way to prevail — that such prep work was necessary.

“I think that this team plays the best when we are facing a difficult situation with adversity,” Scaloni said after defeating England, which led 1-0 with just five minutes of the regular 90 remaining. “We had a challenging game, a challenging situation. We smelled blood in the water, and we went for it.”

Now comes the ultimate test.

It’s a special match for Scaloni and many of his players. Lionel Messi is a Spanish citizen who moved to Barcelona as a child to follow his dreams of becoming an elite professional. Although Messi left Europe for South Florida three years ago to join Inter Miami of MLS, he remains immensely popular everywhere in Spain with the possible exception of Madrid, the home of Barça’s chief rival.

“Not all Spaniards love him, but the majority do,” Scaloni said of Messi. “He’s very special for them as well, [as] the best player in history.”

Seven of the 26 men on Argentina’s roster play for Spanish clubs. Scaloni himself lives in Mallorca with his Spanish wife and children; he once played for the La Liga club there and represented Deportivo La Coruña and Racing de Santander, too. He’s become friends with La Roja coach Luis de la Fuente.

“Everybody knows that I’m in Spain, have a Spanish family, and on Sunday — though I’m very, very sorry — I’m going to try to beat Mr. De la Fuente,” he said.

After Wednesday, how can anyone not like Argentina’s chances of becoming the first repeat World Cup champ since Brazil in 1962?

Nobody is more sure of his team than its coach. 

“We’re going to win the final,” Scaloni said, before seeming to catch himself. “We’re going try to win the final,” he clarified. 

“I know how special this team is,” he added. “We’ve got to prepare for the game, but everybody has to celebrate as well. There are very few moments that we have where we can just be truly joyful. Tomorrow, we have to think about what’s next.”