{"id":1264558,"date":"2022-12-13T09:38:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T09:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/13\/2022-world-cup-argentina-v-croatia-preview\/"},"modified":"2022-12-13T09:38:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T09:38:26","slug":"2022-world-cup-argentina-v-croatia-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/13\/2022-world-cup-argentina-v-croatia-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2022 World Cup: Argentina v Croatia preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/messi-modric-696x392.png\"   alt=\"\" title=\"messi-modric\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Lionel Messi\u2019s presence will give Argentina a \u201cspecial advantage\u201d against Croatia in their World Cup semi-final, says defender Nicolas Tagliafico.<\/p>\n<p>Argentina\u2019s progress to Tuesday\u2019s match has largely been inspired by Messi, the forward scoring four and assisting two of their nine goals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe has always been like this,\u201d said Lyon left-back Tagliafico.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/22191989129,1002554\/MGL\/mgl_ado_atunwa_300x250 --><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us he is our captain and our leader. He is the one pushing us and motivating us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Messi will equal Germany great Lothar Matthaus\u2019 25-match tournament appearance record against the 2018 World Cup finalists at Lusail Stadium (19:00 GMT).<\/p>\n<p>The 35-year-old also has other personal milestones in view as he looks to lead Argentina to a first triumph since 1986, in his fifth and likely last World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>As well as being Argentina\u2019s joint-highest goalscorer alongside Gabriel Batistuta in the competition with 10, Messi is one assist away from equalling Diego Maradona\u2019s overall record of eight at the World Cup finals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is the one who gives us that special advantage when we are on the pitch,\u201d added Tagliafico.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know we have Messi and it is a great source of motivation and hope because we all know that we can contribute and give our best. We are really happy to have Messi as our captain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith everyone\u2019s support we are all working together to achieve our dreams, and it is the most beautiful thing to do it with Messi by our side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Croatia keen to create more history<\/p>\n<p>With a population of less than four million, Croatia head coach Zlatko Dalic says advancing past Argentina to reach a second successive World Cup final would have to be considered his nation\u2019s greatest footballing achievement.<\/p>\n<p>Victory for Croatia on Tuesday would also see them become only the second side after Germany in 2014 to eliminate both Brazil and Argentina in the knockout stages of the same World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe semi-final match against England in the last World Cup [in 2018] was the greatest match of all time, the game against Brazil comes in second,\u201d Dalic said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we win tomorrow that would make it the greatest historical game for Croatia of all time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are among the four best teams in the world \u2013 that is an extraordinary success for Croatia. It is a great thing for two World Cups in a row to be in the four best national teams in football.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want more. We are playing great Argentina, a terrific team led by Lionel Messi. They are highly motivated and under more pressure than Croatia at this moment in time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scaloni defends behaviour<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Argentina boss Lionel Scaloni has defended his players over accusations of misconduct and poor sportsmanship following their\u00a0bad-tempered penalty shootout win\u00a0over the Netherlands in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p>Argentina players mocked their Dutch opponents at the end of the match and Fifa subsequently opened disciplinary proceedings against both sides after the encounter saw a World Cup record of 18 yellow cards issued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe previous game was played the way we had to play \u2013 for both teams. That\u2019s football,\u201d Scaloni said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn some games, things can happen like this. There can be arguments but that\u2019s all. That\u2019s why there\u2019s a referee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to put an end to this idea of thinking Argentina behave like this. We lost to Saudi Arabia and we didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe won the Copa America in Brazil and experienced the most sporting behaviour with [Lionel] Messi, [Leandro] Paredes, and Neymar, who were all sitting together in the tunnel in the Maracana [Stadium]. I\u2019m really not convinced of this idea of unsporting behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>TEAM NEWS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Argentina will be without the suspended Marcos Acuna and Gonzalo Montiel, with Tagliafico set to come in at left-back.<\/p>\n<p>However, both Angel di Maria and Rodrigo de Paul will be fit to play for Scaloni\u2019s side.<\/p>\n<p>Croatia boss Dalic has no injury or suspension concerns and will be able to select from a fully fit squad after Borna Sosa and Mislav Orsic recover from illness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MATCH FACTS<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is the third World Cup meeting between Argentina and Croatia, and first in the knockout stages. Argentina won 1-0 in 1998, before Croatia\u2019s 3-0 win in the 2018 tournament in Russia.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Argentina are looking to reach the World Cup final for the sixth time, a figure bettered only by Germany with eight. They\u2019ve never been eliminated at the semi-final stage before, most recently beating the Netherlands in 2014.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Argentina have won just one of their past seven World Cup games against European sides (D3, L3), beating Poland 2-0 in the group stage this year. However, two of those three draws have resulted in penalty shootout victories.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Croatia were losing finalists in 2018, and could become the fourth European nation to reach consecutive World Cup finals after Italy (1934, 1938), Netherlands (1974, 1978) and Germany (1982, 1986, 1990).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Croatia have won all four of their penalty shootouts at the World Cup, knocking out Japan and Brazil in the last 16 and quarter-finals in 2022 respectively. The only nation to win more penalty shootouts in the competition are Argentina, with five.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>            <!--  [embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=videoseries[\/embed]<!--\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>--><\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"KtHu5d1Cax8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"TUTAG expects gov\u2019t to respect its side of MoU as strike is called off (12-12-22)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KtHu5d1Cax8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lionel Messi\u2019s presence will give Argentina a \u201cspecial advantage\u201d against Croatia in their World Cup semi-final, says defender Nicolas Tagliafico. Argentina\u2019s progress to Tuesday\u2019s match has largely been inspired by Messi, the forward scoring four and assisting two of their nine goals. \u201cHe has always been like this,\u201d said Lyon left-back Tagliafico. \u201cFor us he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1264559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[5312,29244,262,584,784],"class_list":["post-1264558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-argentina","tag-croatia","tag-cup","tag-preview","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}