FIFA World Cup 2010: Argentina vs. Germany - Tactical Analysis
Germany takes on Argentina in a mouth watering clash in Cape Town, South Africa on Saturday. The winner of this match will probably play Spain in the semi-finals, who are favorites for their quarterfinal tie against Paraguay.
The previous meeting between the two teams was in March of this year when Germany lost 1-0 to Argentina in a friendly match which was held in Munich. The last world cup meeting between these two was in 2006 when Germany knocked out Argentina in the quarterfinals after an exciting penalty shootout.
There are a few key tactical battles which will be played out on the pitch. Germany are likely to continue their 4-2-3-1 formation while Argentina have a few tactical problems at hand. So far Argentina has performed well defensively. Their only regular central midfielder has been Javier Mascherano who has played with Di Maria and Maxi Rodriguez on either side of him. With this midfield line up Argentina are bound to face some difficulties in midfield against Germany, so it is quite likely that Maradona will drop either Rodriguez or Di Maria.
Maradona has two options in place, one is that Veron starts in midfield as a deep lying playmaker and helps Argentina retain more possession like they did against Nigeria in their first World Cup group stage match. The other option is that he starts Mario Bollati, a defensive midfielder who will help Mascherano in the middle of the park. However, Bollati was not at all impressive for his club Porto and ever since his transfer to Fiorentina; the midfielder has not played much.
The front three for Argentina play in fluid roles. Higuain usually drops deep and exchanges places with Tevez and Messi from time to time. Tevez drifts wide to the left and to the right as well to give width to the Argentinean attack, while Messi has a free role. Germany will need to stop Messi in order to win the match; Messi has been impressive so far in the World Cup but has not scored any goals.
As Higuain and Tevez usually play ahead of Messi in attack, the responsibility of stopping the Argentinean forward will belong to either Schweinsteiger or Sami Khedira. Schweinsteiger seems to be the more defensive of the two in the German set up so one can expect him to stifle Messi’s path towards the goal. This is easier said than done of course and it won’t be an easy job for the Bayern Munich midfielder to stop the best player in the world.
The man to watch out for in the Argentinean team will be Mesut Ozil, arguably the best young player at the World Cup so far, many teams at the World Cup have made the mistake of not picking him up during games. The job of marking and stopping Ozil will most likely fall to the Argentinean captain Mascherano but Ozil plays high up the field almost as a secondary striker/trequartista role, so this might mean that one of the Argentinean central defenders might have to pick him up.
If Mascherano indeed tries to mark Ozil then he might end up too close to his own back line and thus as a result will be ineffective as a central midfielder, this will also open up more space for Khedira’s late runs from the German midfield to support the attack.
Argentina will most play a deep defense line to combat the threat of Miroslav Klose. This will also help them negate the danger posed by Mueller and Podolski from there runs in behind the defense. This tie can also well be decided through the attacking tendencies of full backs from both sides. Argentinean fullbacks rarely cross the half way line presuming that Otamendi will start on the right back position instead of Gutierrez and Heinze starts at left back.
German fullbacks however pose a greater offensive threat; Phillip Lahm especially is quite good going forward and linking up with the attack. It is possible that Carlos Tevez will be deployed on the same wing as Phillip Lahm so that he can track the full back when he pushes forward.
Argentina are slight favorites for this tie mainly because of Lionel Messi and the magic he can bring to the game. However it appears that Maradona has greater tactical problems to deal with than Joachim Löw.
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