ARGENTINA: FOOTBALL/SOCCER - Argentina coach Alejandro Sabella looks ahead to the 2014 World Cup, hoping to build a squad around ace Lionel Messi and bring a major title back to Argentina after a 21-year dry spell

Record ID: 187143

  • Title: ARGENTINA: FOOTBALL/SOCCER - Argentina coach Alejandro Sabella looks ahead to the 2014 World Cup, hoping to build a squad around ace Lionel Messi and bring a major title back to Argentina after a 21-year dry spell
  • Date: 26th April 2012
  • Summary: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ARGENTINA FORWARDS LIONEL MESSI DURING TEAM PRACTICE
  • Embargoed: 11th May 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina, Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA59AZSDF39Z6KSU8QDXDA9J7OL
  • Story Text: As the 2014 World Cup draws closer, Argentina coach, Alejandro Sabella faces the enormous task of ending his country's 21-year wait for another major title.
    Although he is in only his second job as a head coach, 57-year-old Sabella has World Cup experience under his belt having been Daniel Passarella's assistant at the 1998 finals in France where Argentina reached the quarter-finals.
    Sabella said it's going to be a step-by-step process to bring Argentina back to winning form.
    "Of course, our dream is to do a good job, play the qualifiers, qualify for the World Cup and that we should get there at the right moment because as they always say, it's very important if you're at a World Cup to get there at the right time and be in your best form. You have to be at just the right moment. But there's a long way to go and I don't like skipping stages or times," Sabella told Reuters in an interview at the Argentine Football Association's training complex on the outskirts of the capital.
    The coach said there are key areas to focus on, particularly resolving problems in midfield and defence, their Achilles heel in last year's Copa America.
    Sabella added that aging players is another issue that needs to be addressed - particularly for the midfield.
    He cannot count on midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron, captain of the Estudiantes side that won the Libertadores Cup in 2009, because the 37-year-old is set to retire in June.
    There is a also question mark over Boca Juniors' 34-year-old midfielder Juan Roman Riquelme, not discarded but who last played for Argentina in October 2008 and was overlooked by Sabella's predecessors Diego Maradona and Sergio Batista.
    "Argentina, the first thing I would say, are in the midst of a generation change, which happens to all national teams when there are a lot of young players coming through and we have to strengthen from the middle to the back, that's our search. Were looking there, intently observing. Everyone is aware of the great potential we have in the last 30 metres of the pitch," Sabella said.
    Argentina must get through a gruelling qualifying campaign spread over three years. The next match is with Ecuador on June 2 in Buenos Aires where they will be defending first place in the nine-team group which they hold jointly with Uruguay and Venezuela.
    A week later they have a bye, which they will spend playing Brazil in a friendly in New York.
    Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 and 1986 with squads made up mainly of home-based players. But like his recent predecessors, Sabella picks his team largely from the elite Argentine players based at European clubs.
    "In recent Argentine teams, the majority of the players played abroad in domestic competitions of a slightly higher standard than in Argentine football, a bit more competitive, more demanding, that's the reality, those players are there [in Europe] and so they're the ones in the national team," he said.
    However, he recognised that something is lost for the fans when they cheer on a team consisting mainly of European-based players.
    "The representation is lost a bit in terms of the fact that, all of a sudden the fan, what you lose is the fact that the fans don't see the club sides they support reflected in the players (on the national team). They are players that don't belong to their club. They are going to see the Argentine team as fans of Argentina. But there used to be something more - there were players for the teams they are fans of. And this is lost a bit. At any rate you can see this reflected a bit because they are players who had at least some time at their club before they went abroad and they will continue to connect with that. And also players are leaving at a younger age, fans can't enjoy them here with their clubs first and go see them with different eyes," he said.
    However, Sabella said there are no worries about world player of the year Lionel Messi.
    Sabella named him captain last August and has praised his talent.
    "I don't know if he prefers break away or score goals, because he does them both. He has that great virtue that, over and above his great ability, he has that goal-scoring instinct which means he can beat players so often with the ball at his feet and also has the desire to put it in the net which makes him an extraordinary player," Sabella said.
    Messi, who left the country barely into his teens, had to contend with criticism from Argentine fans expecting him instantly to reproduce with Argentina what he did with Barcelona.
    He struggled at first, though he has now won over most sceptics and become one of the few certainties on Sabella's side.
    Preparing a team around Messi, as Carlos Bilardo did with Diego Maradona to win the World Cup in Mexico in 1986, is the hard part having inherited a squad low on confidence after a disappointing Copa America on home soil last July.
    Argentina's last major trophy was the Copa America in 1993. If they are to win their third World Cup in Brazil, the land of their greatest rivals, Messi will have to be at his peak and be surrounded by a good team.
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