Javier Mascherano celebrates a rare goal in Argentina’s victory

Argentina began their World Cup warm-up matches with just about as friendly a “friendly” as you could ask for against Trinidad & Tobago in the Estadio Monumental last night. Goals from Rodrigo Palacio, Javier Mascherano and Maxi Rodríguez gave La Albiceleste a 3-0 win but a glut of missed chances in the first half kept the scoreline well below what it could have been.

The tone was set during the handshakes when Trinidad & Tobago midfielder, Ataullah Guerra opted to bow to Lionel Messi rather than the traditional handshake. The Caribbean visitors appeared happy to sharing a pitch with some of Argentina’s illustious names.

Alejandro Sabella made some changes to the familiar line-up as a result of injury and to give some members of the squad more playing time. Rodrigo Palacio and Ezequiel Lavezzi started up front in place of the injured Sergio Agüero and Gonzalo Higuaín, and in defence, Martín Demichelis played instead of Ezequiel Garay.

The personnal mattered very little, as expected, Argentina bossed possession and carved out a number of excellent opportunities in the opening period. Palacio, Lavezzi and even captain, Lionel Messi were guilty of spurning a number of excellent opportunites.

With a minute remaining, Ángel di María and Lionel Messi managed to squander the best of those chances but from the resulting corner, Rodrigo Palacio managed to flick a header past the goalkeeper at his near post.

The second half was littered with changes but it made little difference and it didn’t take long before the lead was doubled, albeit from a unpredictable source. Lionel Messi struck the inside of the post with a free kick from the edge of the penalty box and Javier Mascherano was alert to poke in the rebound for his third goal in Argentine colours.

The lead was extended shortly after when Rodrigo Palacio raced clear and although his touch around the goalkeeper was a little heavy he managed to keep the ball in play and cut it back for Maxi to slot past the covering defenders.

The game followed much the same pattern for the remainder and all the changes undoubtedly broke the game up even more. As a warm up it served its purpose and knocks to Palacio and Demichelis do not appear too bad so Alejandro Sabella will be relieved that his squad can move on to Saturday’s match against Slovenia unscathed.

Messi touched on this after the match, “The important thing is we finished the match without any injuries. Our rivals in our group will play like this, they will stay back.”

Messi was also quizzed on the surprise exclusion of Éver Banega but gave a professional response, “People know I’m close with Ever but it was the coach’s decision and we have to understand it.”

Argentina  3 – 0  Trinidad and Tobago