Chile Have Only Themselves to Blame

Editor’s Note: You can find Marc Serber on Twitter at @SoccerSerber

Chile fell 2-1 to Argentina in a scintillating match in which both teams showed their title credentials.

La Roja will be seeing red, however, as the defending champions will feel that they fell on their sword in the Group D opener.

“We have to work on a lot of things,” midfielder Arturo Vidal said afterwards. “We made a lot of mistakes and now, in the next game, we will try not to make as many.”

In truth, we saw the best and worst of the Chilean 4-3-3 which started under Jorge Sampaoli at Universidad de Chile in 2011 and was carried over to the national team when he took the reins in 2012, culminating in last year’s Copa America victory.

The formation and philosophy continues under current boss Juan Antonio Pizzi, as Chile looked to suffocate the Argentine midfield.

Every ball won was quickly dispatched to either Alexis Sanchez or Eduardo Vargas who can interchange positions. Jean Beausejour would join them on occasion, although he is more comfortable as a classical winger and Chile don’t mind him staying out wide to create space in the channels for the midfield three behind him.

With Vidal and Charles Aranguiz the engine room in midfield and Marcelo Diaz holding down the center of the park behind them, Argentina suffered in the first half as space was quickly closed down.

This was best illustrated on the half hour mark as Chile pressured Argentina into giveaway high up the field. Two slick passes put Sanchez through on goal, only for the Arsenal man to see his shot well saved by Sergio Romero.

With Chile closing down the middle, Argentina knew its best option was to quickly find the flanks where its wide players would be isolated against the full backs. In the first half at least, Eugenio Mena and Mauricio Isla were equal to the task against the like of Angel Di Maria and Nicolas Gaitan.

Despite Chile’s positive play there were early warning signs that storm clouds were gathering on the periphery.

Chile was always going to struggle with an overload in the Argentine midfield. The 4-2-3-1 formation giving “La Albiceleste” a two-man advantage.

This meant that any turnover would offer up a chance for Argentina to display its slick combination passing or a blistering counter-attack.

Poor passing out of the Chilean defense led to an Argentine interception, a quick combination on the wing and an opportunity for Gaitan, who saw his header bounce off the top of the crossbar. The chance came within the opening three minutes, but was the perfect foreshadow of what was to come in the second half.

“In the end, we had the better situations,” Argentine midfielder Javier Mascherano observed. “I think that in the first half, we controlled the game better than the second, but part of the plan was to give more freedom to Chile, because we saw that we can take advantage with some key faults. We could pressure them and that’s what we did.”

Indeed, it was another giveaway in the defensive third which lead to Argentina’s opening goal on 51 minutes. Ever Banega won a tackle high up the field and made a darting run into the space left vacant by an ill positioned midfield before slipping the ball for Di Maria to beat Claudio Bravo at his near post.

The goal opened Chile up and Argentina made use of the pockets of space in-between the lines.

Despite Argentina’s newfound freedom, the second goal was almost a carbon copy of the one that had been scored just eight minutes earlier. This time it was Di Maria who came inside and took advantage of more slack possession out of the back before returning the favor for Banega.

In the press conference after the game, Pizzi said there wasn’t much separating the two sides, but conceded that his team made crucial mistakes that lost them the game.

“We have a huge superiority over teams, we just need to transfer it into wins,” Pizzi lamented.

Pizzi is right. At times, Chile’s buildup play was mesmerizing, but the final ball was lacking.

If Chile can find it’s composure in the last 18 and clean up it’s passing out of the back, there should be no problem sweeping aside the likes of Bolivia and Panama.

Two dominant wins and the title holders will be back on song heading into the knockout stages.

While Chile left the Levi’s stadium knowing it had only itself to blame, a relaxed Mascherano, from the other side of the picture, perfectly summed up the 90 minutes to the media, “we are two similar teams. They [Chile] decided to run more, but we were more intelligent.”