Scaloni vows to Australia: We will break our back bones to win

Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni complained about the lack of recovery time ahead of facing Australia in the last 16 of the World Cup, but promised that his team would do everything it could to ensure that there were no more surprises at the tournament in Qatar.

Argentina beat Poland late on Wednesday to book their place in the knockout rounds and will play Australia on Saturday, which Scaloni previously described as a “crazy schedule”.

Scaloni and midfielder Rodrigo de Paul said the team had not trained yet, focusing instead on resting and recovering over the past two days.

Scaloni told reporters Friday: “Australia, who finished second in the group, played at 6pm and we finished first (in our group) but we played at 10pm, we went to bed at 4am and that has an effect when you have a game in 48 hours.” hour.

He added, “We will break our back bones to continue the competition and we know how difficult the World Cup is. This is football. We saw what happened yesterday (when Germany and Belgium were knocked out in the group stage) but it is not surprising. When you say that the big national teams deserve to be in the next stage, This doesn’t always happen.”

There were concerns that winger Angel Di Maria was injured when he came off in the 2-0 win over Poland and Scaloni said he would assess the player’s condition before announcing the starting line-up.

Argentina coach said: “Di Maria is fine. We hope he is fine and can play. At the moment we don’t have a clear picture. If you watch our matches, you know that I don’t always play with the same squad. I focus on the scenario of each match.. I rarely repeat. Same starting lineup.

Australia returns to the knockout stages for the first time since 2006.