:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/SL3PRLZQHJCZPGTXL4IIVRS45Y.jpg "The new faces of the national team: the main candidate to replace Mascherano and the new members of the technical staff of Scaloni")
It will be like starting over wrapped in the greatest of happiness. Lionel Scaloni has renewed his contract with the AFA until the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico 2026, and the machinery of the Argentinian team will be working again in short: on Thursday 23 of this month they will host Panama, at the Más Monumental stadium, and on Tuesday 28 they will face Curaçao, at the Madre de Ciudades in Santiago del Estero. In June there will also be two more friendlies and in September the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers will begin.
In the meeting they had last Monday in Paris before The Best awards won by Scaloni, Lionel Messi, Emiliano Back Martínez and the Argentinian fans, National team coach and AFA President Claudio Tapia have finished fine-tuning several issues related to the future of the national team.
Tapia told Scaloni that Javier Mascherano remains firm in his decision to step down as technical director of the U-20 team after the disappointing performance in the category’s South American Colombia. The team was knocked out in the first round and failed to qualify for the World Cup in Indonesia, which was a blow to AFA youth football, especially in contrast to the Major’s won world title. Mascherano thanked Tapia for his offer to continue leading the team, but told him he felt his Under-20 cycle was over.
The main candidate to succeed him is Lucas Bernardi, who is a friend of Scaloni. Bernardi and Scaloni played together in the Major in 2005, when José Pekerman was the team’s coach. They also shared two games in Newell’s reserve, one against Deportivo Español in December 1995 (3-2 victory, with a goal from the national team coach) and the other against Gimnasia, in La Plata, almost five months later.
On August 17, 2005, when Lionel Messi made his Major League debut and was sent off less than a minute after facing Hungary in Budapest, Scaloni and Bernardi played together for the national team for the second time. The first took place on August 18, 2004, against Japan in Shizuoka, with Claudio Vivas as coach because Marcelo Bielsa was in Athens at the head of the team that won the first gold medal in the history of the Argentina at the Olympics. The former coach of Estudiantes, Arsenal and Newell’s, among others, has been on technical unemployment since 2019, when he managed Godoy Cruz de Mendoza. Santafesino as Scaloni, he is 45 years old and his debut as a DT dates back to 2015.
During the interview, Tapia and Scaloni spoke about another of the issues they had outstanding: that of the two injured in the coaching staff after the World Cup in Qatar. Rodrigo Barrios, the backup physical trainer, traveled to Johor, Malaysia. And Damián Albil, who worked alongside Martín Tocalli as goalkeeping coach, has joined Independiente’s coaching staff with the same task. “For now, I’m going to settle with Luis Martín as my only physical trainer. Later we’ll see. But for now, the only teacher will be Luis Martín,” Scaloni told Tapia – more words, less words – in France.
In exchange, Martín Tocalli will have the collaboration of two former goalkeepers who already work in the orbit of the AFA: Darío The little monkey Herrera and Mauro Dobler. To tell the truth, Herrera was in Qatar as part of the national team coaching staff during the World Cup and now he will start having a bigger role. When he was a footballer, The little monkey He knew how to face Argentino de Quilmes, Quilmes, Berazategui, El Porvenir and Douglas Haig de Pergamino, among other clubs.
For his part, Dobler has worked in the AFA since 2019 after saving at Estudiantes de La Plata, Atlanta, Racing, Almirante Brown and Tiro Federal de Rosario, among other clubs. Precisely in 2019, he was the goalkeeper coach of the under-23 team that won the Pan American Games in Lima, with Fernando “Bocha” Batista as coach.
Scaloni guaranteed four more years at the helm of the national team, as happened at the time with the other two world champion coaches: César Menotti and Carlos Bilardo. Their representatives received polls from various European clubs but Scaloni respected the word he had given to Tapia after his consecration in Qatar. And from the 23rd of this month, against Panama, it will continue a cycle that will have as future great challenges the Copa América 2024 in the United States and the 2026 World Cup, neither more nor less.
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