The Netherlands and Argentina will meet in the quarter-finals of the World Cup on Friday evening (22.00). Therefore, the coaches of the two national teams appeared at the scheduled media conferences. And while Louis van Gaal made jokes with the Dutch journalists, Lionel Scaloni argued with the Argentine ones.It was quite tense at the Argentine press conference. Dissatisfied that important information was leaked to the public ahead of such an important match, Scaloni got into an argument with journalists from his home country during the conference. His reaction was caused by the rumor that appeared the day before that Rodrigo De Paul was injured. As expected, journalists were interested in the condition of the Atletico Madrid midfielder.”Why are you asking me about the De Paul situation?” Scaloni asked angrily.He got an answer from the other side.”Because he was doing some tests and didn’t finish training,” countered Federico Rodas, a DirecTV reporter.##NAJAVA_MECA_6871887##”If you tell me who told you, I will tell you what Rodrigo’s condition is,” Scaloni continued the conversation with the journalist.”No, I won’t tell you who told me,” Rodas replied.”People, we did yesterday’s training behind closed doors…”, Scaloni emphasized.”Does that make you angry, Lionel?” Rodas asked him.”No, don’t make me angry, the training was behind closed doors,” answered the coach of the Gauchos.”No, I thought, are you angry that the information about Rodrigo De Paul’s injury became public?”, specified Rodas.”I don’t know if we are playing for Argentina or the Netherlands… The training was behind closed doors so I don’t know where the information came from. We are not interested in the information that appeared when the media was not at the training. This is something we have to learn from and let’s improve the whole environment, both in Argentina and in the national team,” Scaloni concluded.“No sé si jugamos para Argentina o para Holanda”.Lionel Scaloni.pic.twitter.com/yQctdCjAuA— Sudanalytics (@sudanalytics_) December 8, 2022 Journalists then referred to Angel di Maria’s condition. They were interested in whether he would be ready for tomorrow’s match, given that he missed the round of 16 against Australia due to injury.”In principle, both of them feel good and in today’s training we will see in which formation we will play. The team comes first, so if you are not on the field, you have to be ready to be able to help the team.”So far, we have seen two penalty shootouts at the World Cup, in the matches Croatia-Japan and Spain-Morocco. Scaloni admits that his chosen ones have also practiced penalties, but he hopes that the shootout does not happen.”We practiced them before and after training. I hope it won’t come to that and we’ll go through earlier. But you can’t approach the game and think about penalties from the first minute. We plan to win the game in 90 minutes.”
