Japan U-17 vs Argentina U-17: Waiting For the Breakthrough of Lionel Messi's Successor Wonderkid

Argemtina U-17 is still waiting for Lionel Messi's successor to be born. (photo: Instagram.com/@aphaseleccion)

JAKARTA - The second matchday of Group D will bring together the Japan U-17 national team and Argentina U-17. The match will be held at the Si Jalak Harupat Stadium, Bandung on Tuesday, November 14 at 19.00 p.m. Western Indonesia Time (WIB).

This time, the breakthrough of Lionel Messi's successor wonderkids is eagerly awaited. Three full points are important for young La Albiceleste in order to improve their position in the standings for the 2023 U-17 World Cup Group phase.

The reason is that when they faced Senegal U-17 in their first match, Diego Placente's team failed to win. Claudio Echeverri and colleagues lost to Singa Teranga with a final score of 1-2.

This is certainly a serious note for Diego Placente to restore the mentality of his team from the defeat they experienced in the first match.

However, efforts to recover against Japan U-17 did not always go smoothly. La Seleccion were faced with the fact that a number of their players were injured.

Quoted from Argentine media TyC Sport, there are four players whose condition is still being monitored ahead of the duel with Japan U-17.

In fact, one of the players who was injured was their star and captain, Claudio Echeverri, Mariani Gerez, Gustavo Albarracin and Juan Gimenez.

Echeverri reportedly experienced muscle cramps after the match against Senegal. Just like Echeverri, two other players, namely Juan Gimenez and Mariano Gerez, were also reported to be experiencing cramps.

One other player, namely Gustavo Albarracin, suffered an injury to his knee. In fact, it is very doubtful that Albarracin will be able to appear in the match against the Japanese U-17 national team later.

Meanwhile in the opposing camp, the Japan U-17 national team is looking at the match against Argentina with high confidence. The Samurai Blue team pocketed enough capital after winning 1-0 over Poland on the first matchday.

On the other hand, Argentina U-17 could see a gap in the Japanese squad who admitted that their victory was also helped by heavy rain. Argentina must look for weaknesses in Japan, which admitted that it was quite difficult to break down Poland's defense on the first matchday.

“We use delays to motivate players. We also made changes to the players and the timing was good. So we were able to control the match at the end of the second half. "So the heavy rain was an advantage for us," said Japan coach Moriyama Yoshiro after the match against Poland.