Former England defender Gary Neville slammed Argentina’s style of play in the World Cup and said the team would have struggled to reach the semifinal stage without the services of Lionel Messi. The Argentine captain was once again the star of the show for his team, scoring eight goals and providing eight assists in the quadrennial tournament.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s ultra-physical game was questioned by a lot of pundits. Ferran Torres scored the match-winning goal in the 106th minute after Nico Williams provided him the assist.
After 120 minutes, Nahuel Molina hit Rodri in the chest when Spain’s captain was running towards his teammates to celebrate. When Rodri retaliated, Paredes grabbed Eric García by the throat and then threw Gavi to the ground.
Gary Neville said on the Overlap, “Let’s be clear, they played really poor in the game. What I will say is to stay in the game as long as they did, you’ve got to hand it to them. Well done to them,” he said. “But they played like a bag of s—.
“Sometimes, if it looks like s— and it smells like s—, it is s—. What we watched was a performance that was really poor. And they’ve played at times poorly but they’ve got massive chemistry and fierce competitiveness that gets them through.
“And they’ve got an incredible player up top [Lionel Messi] that, to be fair, gets them over the line. Without him, and I said this in the last tournament, they are a team that would struggle to get to the semifinals.”
On the other hand, former Manchester United captain Roy Keane defended Argentina’s style of play.
Speaking to Wright, he said: “I think you’re so disrespectful to Argentina. You have to find different ways to win. You don’t have to like it but don’t you admire them a little bit?”
Micah Richards also slammed Paredes for picking up the fight after the final whistle.
“Paredes doesn’t need to do that; he’s better than that, and it doesn’t stop there — it keeps going and going and going.
“We all know what it’s like to lose a game, we can be very frustrated, but this is not good enough — it’s not a good look at all.”
