With World Cup Dream Intact, Argentina Turns Focus To Spain With Confidence
Argentina's national soccer team is preparing for the World Cup final against Spain after a dramatic semifinal victory. Coach Lionel Scaloni revealed he began scouting Spain before his own team had even secured their spot in the final.
Why it matters
It highlights the high-stakes preparation and strategic mindset required at the elite level of international sports.
ATLANTA STADIUM — Watching Argentina’s coach speak the day before his team produced one of the most epic semifinal comebacks in World Cup history, it was impossible not to think that Lionel Scaloni was trying to soften the potential blow for the soccer-crazy nation’s almost 47 million citizens. La Albiceleste has been so successful under the unassuming 48-year-old — winning a World Cup and two Copa América crowns in the last five years — that the prospect of losing has become almost incomprehensible to most fans. Maybe even to Argentina’s players, who never seem to know when they’re beaten. Scaloni, the thinking went, had to be the realist among the dreamers.
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