The Olympic Football Tournament is probably not going to be the highlight of your year as a fan. Be honest, football isn’t what you’ll be watching the Olympics for, after all.

And with the European Championship and the Copa Libertadores having provided some brilliant football and no end of surprises, the UEFA Champions League and Europe’s biggest domestic competitions having been as widely watched as ever, and a new season just around the corner, you could be forgiven for making the matches about to take place in China something of a lower priority.

To do so, though, would be to risk missing some of the most beautiful football to be played between now and the end of the year, because at least one team at the Beijing games have it in them to entertain to as high a standard as a proper full national team.

That’s because, at one end of the pitch at least, they are a full national team, or near as dammit. Four years ago Carlos Tevez led Argentina’s side to the country’s first-ever Olympic Gold medal — in any sport (they won the polo back in the ’50s, but it was only a test event). For Beijing, Tevez won’t be there, but the players who will be suggest there’s every chance of the champions defending their title.

A number of other sides have some potential going forward — Brazil are seeking to revitalise Ronaldinho’s career and include his new team-mate at AC Milan, Alexandre Pato, whilst Italy’s squad contains no shortage of young attacking talent — but it’s only Argentina who look the finished unit in this regard. Not convinced? Then let’s look at the options:

You probably don’t know Lautato Acosta‘s name yet, but you should do before too much longer. Excellent for Argentinos Juniors Lanus back at home over the last year, he’s been signed this summer by Sevilla and, as a dropping-off forward who can also play wide left or right, should fit in well at an attack-minded club who’ll be looking to get back into La Liga’s Champions League spots at the end of this season.

Ezequiel Lavezzi started his Napoli career a year ago with a hat-trick on his competitive debut in front of a home crowd who, perhaps understandably, will always have high expectations of any Argentine forward who’s given the number 10 jersey (they once had rather a good one apparently, Diego Something-or-other…).

That was followed by a season in Serie A which saw his club claim a UEFA Cup spot as he scored a number of goal-of-the-month contenders and began to look like a less selfish and more team-orientated player than he’d been, to be perfectly frank, the previous season at San Lorenzo (when he won the Clausura championship in Argentina’s Primera A).

Among the other more attack-minded Argentine players are a couple listed in the squad papers as ‘midfielders’, but in reality operate as attackers for their clubs, although they’re capable of playing deeper.

Diego Buonanotte is another you probably won’t know about, but he’s just been the player of the championship as River Plate reclaimed the league title in Argentina after a four year wait, his side’s leading goalscorer and assist-maker during the Torneo Clausura.

Angel Di María has enjoyed a decent first season at Benfica in Portugal, showing his creative abilities. As well as his pace, passing and finishing, he’s also got more height than the rest of the team, which might see him moved further up the pitch should Sergio Batista, the Olympic squad’s manager, see a need to vary the attack at all.

A trident of players, though, will be the focus of Argentina’s attacking. One is an overage player, Boca Juniors’ Juan Román Riquelme, who will be sitting between the midfield and the attackers, pulling the strings and supplying the ammo for whichever forwards are ahead of him.

If he arrives in the box, Riquelme’s also shown his goal threat: at club level, it’s been remarked by several critics that he’s a better finisher than the striker he normally provides for, and when one of those strikers is Martín Palermo, a man chasing the club’s all-time goalscoring record, that’s quite a statement.

The other two players of the three are the two who are likely, injury and form permitting, to play ahead of Riquelme. Lavezzi and Acosta would probably both have aspirations of starting for any of the competition’s other teams, but for Argentina they’ll be happy to play second fiddle — or rather, third and fourth fiddle — because the men (or should we remind ourselves once more that they’re really boys?) ahead of them are two of the hottest attacking talents in the world at the moment.

Atlético Madrid have just qualified for the Champions League for the first time in over a decade, thanks in no small part to the abundant talents of Sergio El Kun Agüero, a player even the Real Madrid-biased sections of Spain’s press have been singing the praises of this season.

Barcelona, meanwhile, are rebuilding their team after, by their standards, a disastrous couple of years, and part of that rebuild involves handing Ronaldinho’s old number 10 shirt to his heir. To Maradona’s heir, perhaps. Arguably, to a talent who, if he can avoid any more serious injury, could become the greatest player of the 21st century.

It was confirmed last week, after a lot of ridiculous posturing from Barcelona president Joan Laporta, who seemed unaware that FIFA regulations mean his club had to let any Under-23 player in their squad travel to the Games if he accepted his country’s call-up, that Lionel Messi would join the Argentine squad.

When the news was announced, it’s probably fair to assume that goalkeepers and defenders in the squads of Ivory Coast, Australia and Serbia — Argentina’s three opponents in the group stage — had to go for a bit of a sit down. It turned a team who were already red-hot favourites for gold into one who might be absolutely devastating.

It won’t all be plain sailing for Argentina. Javier Mascherano is the other over-aged player alongside Riquelme, but in spite of his abilities the defence, if tested, might be found wanting — they’re all playing for big clubs, but lack first team experience at present.

And if the recent row that erupted prior to the senior side’s World Cup qualifier away to Brazil – when Messi questioned the side’s over-reliance on Riquelme, who wasn’t in the best of form or health – resurfaces, the dressing room dynamic might not prove the calmest.

One thing, though, is for sure: whilst there are other teams in the competition capable of winning it on their day, none of them have the potential to click in so spectacular a fashion as Argentina might do.

If Messi, Agüero, Riquelme and Co. perform to half of what they’re capable of, who knows? You might actually find yourself sitting up and paying some attention to the Olympic Football Tournament. Now, who’d have thought it….

For more insight on Argentinian football, read Sam Kelly at Hasta El Gol Siempre.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Hasta El Gol Siempre‘s Sam Kelly takes an early look at the start of Argentina’s football season – namely the 2008 Clausura and the Copa Libertadores.

The 2008 Torneo Clausura is three weeks old, and already Argentina’s got a club at the top of the league table who haven’t been there for a little while. Estudiantes de La Plata, the champions of the 2006 Apertura, have made a good start to life under new manager Roberto Sensini, winning all three of their games, but joining them on maximum points are a side who’d lately become all but lost to mid-table: Vélez Sársfield.

Vélez’s rise back to championship contenders after a little while off has been sudden but hardly dramatic or unpredictable. The club from the west of the Capital Federal district brought in former Mexico boss Ricardo La Volpe at the start of 2007, after he’d narrowly failed to guide Boca Juniors to the league title, and in return sent Boca their own ex-boss, Miguel Angel Russo going the other way. La Volpe had a promising start but faded after a while and Vélez never quite achieved what they might have done under him. So, at the end of the 2007 Apertura, out he went, to be replaced by Tocalli.

Tocalli doesn’t have the same instant recognisability to foreign Argentina-watchers as does the chain-smoking, massive-moustached La Volpe, one of the most recognisable managers of the last World Cup in Germany, but whilst he’s quieter than his predecessor, he’s got plenty going for him managerially: it was he who guided Argentina’s Under 20s to victory in last year’s World Youth Cup in Canada, and the club he’s now joined is renowned for having one of the best youth academies in Argentina and some of the best training facilities on the continent. And he’s moulding that young side into a well-functioning machine, with the emphasis on attacking football (three matches, nine goals scored) and two able forwards, Gustavo Balvorín and Santiago Silva, at the head.

‘Our objective is to qualify for the Copas [Libertadores and Sudamericana],’ insisted the manager this week when quizzed about whether he was going to aim any higher following the good start. ‘If something else happens, even better. Much better.’ But he’s not going to get carried away with the thought. He’s aware, though, that the championship contenders — Estudiantes, defending champions Lanús, and the ever-present duo of River Plate and Boca Juniors — all have Copa Libertadores campaigns to potentially distract them from their pursuit of the league title, and that’s one head-turner Vélez don’t currently have to worry about. How far can Tocalli take this team? Time will tell…

Copa Libertadores

It’s been a mixed start for Argentina’s sides in the Copa Libertadores, meanwhile. River, Estudiantes and San Lorenzo all got off to losing starts away from home against nominally smaller teams at high altitude. Home matches for these teams will count for a lot, so it won’t be much comfort for Estudiantes to have drawn their first home game on Tuesday night, against fellow Argentines Lanús, who themselves now have four points after two matches.

River, after that opening defeat to San Martín of Peru, were desperate to win against América on Wednesday night and get their group campaign up and running, even more so after 2007 saw them perform disastrously in the competition, crashing out in the first round after defeats both away and at home to Caracas — the latter was the first time a Venezuelan club had ever won a match in Argentina. They made hard work of it, falling behind early on but going in at the break all square thanks to an equaliser from Colombian striker Radamel Falcao García, who’s developing a happy habit for them of scoring in all the big games. The second half saw relentless pressure from River with no way through the visiting defence — until with the very last kick of the match, immediately after Falcao and América defender José Castro had seen red for fighting, Ariel Ortega sent the ball flying into the net and the Estadio Monumental exploded. Watching River in the Copa Libertadores is rarely dull, but it’s not often an early group match causes quite that amount of nerves, all the same.

Arsenal de Sarandí, meanwhile, are playing in their first ever Libertadores, right after beating América in that Copa Sudamericana final, and after qualifying with ease got things in the competition proper started just swimmingly with a 1-0 win over Paraguayan dark horses Libertad, who have made a habit of making things very awkward for Argentine clubs in recent seasons and have been tipped by plenty of seasoned Copa-watchers to go some distance in this year’s tournament. In beating them, Arsenal managed one thing they didn’t do at any point during their succesful Sudamericana run: they won a match at home. Amazing, hey?

Lanús got off to a still better start, beating the intimidating Uruguayan side Danubio 3-1 at home and playing as well as they had done in winning the domestic title during the first half of this season. Defending Libertadores champions Boca Juniors, however, were rather underwhelming, falling behind to a spectacular late free kick from Miguel Mea Vitali in Maracaibo before rallying to equalise through Sebastián Battaglia. So far in the Copa, it’s very much a case of ‘must improve’ for Argentina’s clubs. This early on, however, it’s all to play for both at home and internationally…

For more insight on Argentinian football, read Sam Kelly at Hasta El Gol Siempre.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News