Argentina captain, Lionel Messi, has explained that he wasn’t expecting such a result against Brazil and labelled the quagmire that La Albiceleste find themselves as ‘s*it’. The Barcelona number 10 believes that the game was even until the Samba men scored the first goal and broke the deadlock, who then scored 2 more to run out 3-0 winners.
However, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner insisted that Argentina’s qualification to the 2018 World Cup still depends on them.
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“We did not expect this result,” Messi told TyC Sports.
“Up to the first goal, the match was even, we were doing well. It's difficult when you get into these dynamics, in this situation. The minimum is you get down and everything turns out to be more difficult.
“Within all the bad things and the s*** we are in, we still depend on ourselves.”
The former Newell’s Old Boys player stated that winning against Colombia would put Argentina back into contention again as the fight for the qualification is a tight one, with teams in the middle of the table tight-knit with the number of points between them.
However, winning against James Rodriguez and co. won’t be as easy and Lionel Messi believes that his team has to improve a lot in order to defeat Colombia.
“If we defeat Colombia, we get into the fight again - all the teams are near - but it's true we are aware and we know that this is not the way to do things. We have to change a lot to defeat Colombia.”
In a session with ESPN later on, the Barcelona living legend called for unity among his peers as this is a situation that demands the group to be tightly bound together if they are to get out of this rut.
Messi later told ESPN: “We need to be strong and get out of this situation. Today we have to be more united than ever. We all want the same thing: to qualify for the World Cup.”
Argentina lie at number 6 after this loss to Brazil. They need to finish at least fifth in order to have a chance of qualifying for the World Cup. However a fifth-place finish would mean that they would have to engage in a play-off encounter against an Asian country.
Hence, Argentina would like to avoid going through the added mess of having to play a play-off, which means that winning every game from now on would be what Sergio Bauza’s men should look for.
