The coach of the Under-20 National Team, Javier Mascherano, He submitted his resignation from office one month after the first round elimination in the South American tournament in Colombia. “He wanted to go alone, despite the offers of renewal and the good relationship with Claudio (Tapia). We couldn’t keep him.”explained a high-ranking source from the Argentine Football Association (AFA) to the Télam agency.
“The decision was totally his. We were surprised and we don’t have any kind of alternative plan. We are going to wait for the president of the AFA to return from his trip to Paris,” said the same manager, close to Tapia. Mascherano, with no background as a coach and owner of a soccer academy in the Buenos Aires town of Lincoln, took office in December of 2021 but notHe never had a good relationship with Lionel Scaloni and his work team.
“They always blamed him for cutting himself. When he appeared in Qatar his presence did not go down very well but he has Tapia’s bench,” said the leader in the story to Télam. Mascherano had met with the president of the AFA and with Bernardo Romeo, the coordinator of the youth teams, forty and eight hours after elimination in Colombia and in principle it had been ratified by Tapia who valued his experience of four Senior World Cups played for the Argentine National Team.
In the South American, Argentina was left out in the first round of the tie and barely collected three points out of a possible twelve, with a solitary victory over Peru by 1-0 and losses against Paraguay (2-1), Brazil (3-1) and the last one against Colombia (1-0). The team never showed a defined line of play and the constant changes introduced by Mascherano blurred his identity.
“We have bothered the boys a lot throughout the year and in this preparation, and they have always given us the players. There are no excuses, the one who failed is me and I have to take charge”Mascherano said shortly after the elimination that left Argentina out of the World Cup of the category that will be played in Indonesia and the soccer competition of the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile.
The decision is surprising because it was consummated while Tapia was still traveling through Europe after the delivery of The Best awards in Paris and It is a hard blow for the National Team project, in which the AFA leadership has been doing planned and fruitful work with Scaloni in charge of the major now until 2026, Pablo Aimar in the Sub-17 and Deigo Placente in the Sub-15. It is possible that Mascherano’s successor will come out of Scaloni’s environment, who wanted to interfere in the youth teams from the beginning of his management.
