World Cup 2018: Tactical uncertainty, defensive naivety and an Argentina job just too big for Jorge Sampaoli

For each of his four World Cup games in charge Jorge Sampaoli tried something different. None of his efforts really convinced. Against Iceland there was the attempt to match a blazer with very tight jeans that wound up with him looking like Foghorn Leghorn going to a job interview. Then there was the Glaswegian singles night chic of low-cut T-shirt with a jacket for the defeat to Croatia. A tracksuit, zipped to the top, followed for the win over Nigeria before, in the heat of Kazan, came a short-sleeved training shirt. The final two games at least delivered a semblance of belonging, but Sampaoli never seemed at home in this World Cup. Tactically, it was much the same story.

“I think that we adapted to necessity, maybe, rather than having a clear identity,” Sampaoli said. “We had a clear need, and we had to win. That was our main goal, so that was maybe stronger than our football concept.”

There is nothing wrong with pragmatism, perhaps particularly in international football when there is so little time for a coach to work with his players and try to impose some level of identity, but Argentina didn’t seem particularly pragmatic either. For all the talk of conjuring the spirit of 1990 and using a humiliating defeat as a springboard to greater things, that side conceded four goals in seven games. In the defeat by France, this one conceded four in 55 minutes. They let in nine in the tournament.

And then, of course, there is Lionel Messi, a player who increasingly, at least at international level, seems to cause his own coach as many headaches as he does the opposition.

“We had the best player in the world,” Sampaoli said forlornly, “and we had to try and create collective situations that allowed us to really use that player who can have really big moments. We tried many different tactics, surrounding him, creating situations for him. We tried to use everything we had to allow him to do what he can do. Sometimes we managed to do so, sometimes we didn’t.” Mainly, though, it was didn’t.

Change the shape every game and there is no chance of any level of mutual understanding developing. Having devised his 2-3-3-2 schema (perhaps just a 4-4-2 with a diamond in midfield and attacking full-backs) before the tournament, why field something approximating to it only once? And when that worked, in the first half against Nigeria before panic set in after the penalty, why then abandon it for the France game? Messi with Sergio Aguero, Messi with Gonzalo Higuain, Messi as a false nine...by the end it just seemed like rolling the dice and hoping.

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Sampaoli, of course, is due some sympathy. He took over the side last June as the third coach in this qualifying series. Even getting to the World Cup was by no means certain. He proved himself with Chile more than capable of, if not imposing an identity, then at least sustaining one. But the principles that underpinned that involved pressing high up the pitch and operating with a high line. Do that with defenders as slow Nicolas Otamendi, Marcos Rojo and Federico Fazio and you are hopelessly exposed, which is why they let in six against Spain and four against Nigeria even before the tournament.

The only reasonable way for them to play was to sit deep as Alejandro Sabella’s side had in Brazil four years ago and try to grind their way through. But that is not Sampaoli’s football and if Argentina had attempted to play that way, there’d have been little point having him there. It may be that the Argentinian Football Association decides there is no point having him there, although if they do it will cost them a reported $16m, plus whatever compensation they have to pay to secure his replacement. River Plate’s Marcelo Gallardo would seem the obvious candidate, although the Ricardo Gareca’s achievements with Peru cannot have gone unnoticed.

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Whoever is in charge for the Copa America next summer, it will not make the centre of defence any quicker and nor, assuming he has not yet given up on the national team, will it make Argentina any less dependent on Messi, a player whose genius has become a curious burden for his country. But whoever it is might at least look the part, rather than bouncing queasily around his technical area grabbing at any formation that happens to drift by. Sampaoli’s credentials as a coach are exceptional but the brutal truth is that Argentina has looked too big for him.