World Cup scouting report: the lowdown on Argentina, England’s semi-final opponents

Defending champions will pose a threat with Messi’s genius, but their lack of width and energy in the midfield offers encouragement for Thomas TuchelSwitzerland knew how to deal with Lionel Messi. They congested the centre of the pitch and made it impossible for him to find angles for threaded passes or rapier finishes. One of Messi’s trademark moves, when the tempo has slowed, is to go through the gears with a quick bounce pass off one of his teammates near the edge of the area. The idea is that Messi then has room to unwind his left boot and produce the inevitable, but it did not work out in the quarter-final. Instead, Messi ran into a formidable wall of red, only finding space to work Gregor Kobel moments before Julián Alvarez’s winner. Much of Argentina’s setup is designed to put Messi, whose non-contribution off the ball is priced into everything, in optimal positions to wreak havoc. Against Switzerland, the 39-year-old had, by his stratospheric standards, a quiet game even if he still managed to assist Alexis Mac Allister’s goal from a corner. “Stop Messi” is a tactic that sounds good in principle, but most have found impossible to execute. Maybe England have been shown the way. Continue reading...