FIFA WC 2018: Five reasons why Argentina failed against Croatia

Bengaluru, June 22: Argentina played lackluster football to go 0-3 down against Croatia in a FIFA World Cup 2018 Group D match on Thursday night (June 21).

It's easy to blame Lionel Messi for the poor outing of Argentina, the 2014 finalists, but there are more to their crash landing than Messi's passive effort. Here's MyKhel looks at some of them.

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1 Poor calls by Jorge Sampaoli

There is this fibre thin line between bravery and stupidity and Sampaoli realised it against Croatia in the most painful way. Argentina benched Angel di Maria, Gonzalo Higuain, Paulo Dybala, who was given a late appearance, Ever Banega and Giovani Lo Celso. Sampaoli picked Enzo Perez, Gabriel Mercado, Nicolas Tagliafico, Maxi Meza and Marcos Acuna ahead of the aforementioned stars.

Simply incredible from #CRO as they seal their place in the knock-out stages with a historic victory!

Take a bow, @HNS_CFF 👏👏👏#ARGCRO pic.twitter.com/pW9hyQGCAa

— FIFA World Cup 🏆 (@FIFAWorldCup) June 21, 2018

Argentina needed full firepower in a must-win match to avoid complications in their ambition to progress to knockout stages. But Sampaoli ensured that Argentina came out with a second string team and paid for it.

2 Change of formation

Argentina employed the 4-2-3-1 formation against Iceland in their first group match that ended in a 1-1 draw. Sampaoli went for 3-4-3 system against Croatia. It was a sharp change to make in a short time as pointed out by experts like Cesc Fabregas. Argentina played almost the entire length of their qualification matches with four players in the back and suddenly Sampaoli asked them to play with three men in their back. It made Argentina look hassled and lack of ideas and the shortage of one man in the back row allowed Croatia that extra space. They used it brilliantly through Luka Modric and Ante Rebic.

3 The Caballero error

Willy Caballero has not had a good game time this season. At Chelsea, the 36-year-old was the second man behind Thibaut Courtois and that rustiness was evident in his shoddy clearance that served Ante Rebic a chance to score and the Croatian converted it in an excellent manner with a sweet volley.

Hold on... that's not a #CRO shirt?!

We caught up with the @Budweiser #ManoftheMatch winner following tonight's result in NIzhny Novgorod.#ARGCRO pic.twitter.com/jQMYkraGNB

— FIFA World Cup 🏆 (@FIFAWorldCup) June 21, 2018

4 Luka Modric

It's not for nothing Modric is admired as the midfielder in the world right now. He is a pillar for Crotia and Real Madrid and made light of the fact that he may end up in prison in a perjury case. But the Croatian captain was fully focused on the job at hand and cut open the Argentina line-up that lacked in skill and effort to stop a maestro like Modric.

5 Lack of team effort

Sampaoli is a coach who emphasis on team work rather than individual brilliance. His success as a coach came through that mantra of collectivism. But with Argentina it was different, Sampaoli had to reshape his strategies to suit the presence of Messi. But that building a team around Messi did not suit Sampaoli style and he admitted that Messi's brilliance is getting overshadowed with Argentina. But he found that out too late.