Scaloni breaks silence before World Cup: injuries, squad, XI v Honduras | OneFootball

Argentina’s national team left Kansas on Friday and arrived in Texas ahead of Saturday’s friendly against Honduras. Beyond the open training session that will take place in the new city, the day’s attention will be focused on Lionel Scaloni, who will give his first press conference since the start of the training camp ahead of the World Cup at 7:15 p.m. (Argentina time).

On the eve of the first warm-up match and 11 days before the national team’s debut against Algeria, the coach is expected to address several of the issues currently drawing the most attention around Argentina: the physical condition of players dealing with injuries, the possibility of any changes to the squad list, and the lineup he has in mind for Saturday, among others. The coach’s remarks will come 45 minutes before the start of training, which will be open to the press and broadcast by TyC Sports.

The main question mark concerns the injured players. During the first training sessions in the United States, the coaching staff chose to manage workloads and have several players do separate exercises, a situation that inevitably raised concerns less than two weeks before the World Cup opener.

On Wednesday, the big surprise was Julián Álvarez’s absence from on-field activities. The forward had been medically cleared just a day earlier, but when he took part in the formal training session, the ankle where he had been dealing with a sprain became inflamed again. Although the national team is projecting calm and believes he will make it to the World Cup without any issues, his situation will surely be one of the topics Scaloni addresses in greater depth.

In addition, the AFA reported on Thursday that Nicolás Paz, Gonzalo Montiel, Nahuel Molina, Leandro Paredes, and Lionel Messi are all continuing to recover favorably from the various physical issues they have been carrying and are doing so within the timelines expected by the medical staff. Emiliano Martínez is also on that list. The World Cup-winning goalkeeper still has his right hand immobilized due to the fracture in his ring finger he suffered weeks ago, although he will be available for the opener without any problems.

Could there be changes to the World Cup squad? That possibility will be one of the main focuses of Scaloni’s comments. The truth is that although the coaching staff is projecting calm and insists that all the players will be fit for the World Cup, the experience in Qatar makes caution necessary.

Just days before that tournament, Scaloni had to make last-minute changes because of physical issues, and several players who had remained on a sort of “reserve list” ended up being called up. For that reason, the coach has already taken precautionary measures and notified four players to stay alert in case of a hypothetical emergency call-up to the World Cup if there are withdrawals: Santiago Beltrán, Nicolás Capaldo, Máximo Perrone, and Emiliano Buendía.

For now, there are no concrete signs of imminent changes, but the press conference will serve to provide a first-hand update on the situation of each of the players currently training under controlled workloads.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.