The football Pre-Olympic opens with two tickets up for grabs for Paris 24: when Argentina debuts

A handful of young people, some very important absences, 26 matches in 23 days and two golden tickets to Paris 2024 will offer the Pre-Olympic of the South American Football Confederation which will take place starting from Saturday in Venezuela and in which the Argentine team, led by Javier Mascheranohe will try to qualify for a competition that has seen him on the top step of the podium twice: in Athens 2004 and in Beijing 2008.

This will be the 14th edition of the championship bringing together Under 23 teams of the 10 federations belonging to Conmebol: the first was played in Peru in 1960, was a qualifier for the Rome Games of that year and was in the hands of Argentina. Venezuela will host for the first time a tournament with a marked hegemony of the two giants of the continent: THE Albiceleste he won it five times and Brazil seven (Chile won the title in 1992).

The competition will be divided into two phases. In the preliminary phase, the selected teams will be divided into two groups, in which they will compete against each other. The teams that finish in the top two places in each zone will advance to the final phase. In it, the four qualifiers will once again play all against all. The two best in that case will qualify for Paris.

The match between Ecuador and Colombia will kick off on Saturday at 5pm at the Brígido Iriarte Stadium in Caracas. On the same day, at 8pm, Venezuela and Bolivia will face each other on the same stage. The other member of zone A, Brazil, will only make their debut on Tuesday the 23rd against the Bolivians.

Argentina will debut against Paraguay on Sunday 21st at 8pm at the Misael Delgado Stadium in Valencia, which can accommodate 10,400 spectators. In the same building and at the same time they will face Peru on Wednesday 24th, Chile on Tuesday 30th and Uruguay on Friday 2nd February. The final phase will begin on Monday 5 February, will end six days later and will take place entirely at the Barquisimeto Municipal Stadium. Competition matches can only be viewed through Sports Direct TV. Public television will not broadcast them due to the national government’s decision not to acquire broadcast rights.

Although in the At the Olympic Games there could be three older footballers among the 16 selected in the sub-23 teams, in the subcontinental qualifiers these exceptions will not be allowed, therefore all teams will be made up of players born on or after 1 January 2001. As if that were not enough, given that the tournament is not part of the international FIFA calendar circuit, the clubs were not obliged to give up their players, so most of the great South American figures of this era will not participate.

Therefore, Argentina will be deprived of having more than a dozen elite men Enzo Fernández, Alejandro Garnacho, Facundo Buonanotte, Lucas Beltrán, Máximo Perrone and Luka Romero. In any case, they will not be the only team damaged: Brazil will not have Rodrygo, Gabriel Martinelli, João Pedro and Vitor Roque, among others; Uruguay will lose Facundo Pellistri and Manuel Ugarte; Ecuador will not have Moisés Caicedo and Colombia Jhon Durán.

Regardless of the absences, Argentina will try to reconfirm its status as two-time pre-Olympic champions: it won the last two editions which took place in 2004 in Chile and in 2020 in Colombia (qualification for Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro) The Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games resulted in the South American U-20 Championships played a year earlier).

After a long preparation that began in September and included two friendlies with Japan (lost 5-2 and drawn 0-0), two with Ecuador (won 3-0 and 2-0) and several with local football teams, Mascherano has finished building a squad that has allowed him to travel with great expectations.

“We are very satisfied. We arrived with good playing time, which was what interested us most, because many guys are in pre-season. and we have to do a different job. We played a lot of friendly matches because we were worried about this.”the coach underlined on Tuesday, a few hours before flying to Valencia,

That exciting team has Mascherano as its captain Thiago Almadaworld champion in Qatar 2022, and as another of his emblems Valentine’s Day boat, recently transferred to Brighton & Hove Albion. They are two of the three members of the team who play abroad (the other is Lucas Esquivel, of Atletico Paranaense). Furthermore, there are men who have accumulated more than a hundred matches in the First Division of Argentine football, such as Juan Nardoni (Racing), Cristian Medina (Boca) and Juan Sforza (Newell’s).

The bad news for the coach was his abandonment Giuliano Malatini. The defender had been included in the roster, but after the deadline set by Conmebol to make changes (January 5) he was sold by Defensa y Justicia to Werder Bremen, who presented him as a reinforcement on Tuesday. The German club wanted him immediately, so they did not allow him to participate in the competition. For this reason, Argentina’s squad will be made up of 22 players and not 23, like most of their opponents.

“When planning the squad the ideal is to have two players in all roles. Malatini gave us the opportunity to cover two of them, as a central player and sometimes as a winger. We are left with three players for two positions. Now we’ll have to improvise, find a way around it. “We have players for that, but it’s not ideal.”complained Mascherano, who had already lost Pedro De la Vega to injury. In that case he was able to replace the Lanús player Claudio Echeverrithe new jewel of River, already sold to Manchester City.

The other major candidate to win one of the tickets to Paris is Brazil, the current two-time Olympic champion (they won in Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020). Coach Ramón Menezes, who temporarily led the senior team last year, was confident in the possibilities his team offers him. “I am the future of Brazilian football. “This is a very talented generation, but they have to prove it,” he said.

THE Yellow green will have as a frontman Endrick, the great hope of Brazilian football. The 17-year-old boy, a fundamental piece of the Palmeiras team that won the Brasileirão just over a month ago (he scored 11 goals), has already been sold to Real Madrid, who will sign him in July, when he becomes of age.

Endrick’s attacking partner will be John Kennedy, author of the decisive goal with which Fluminense beat Boca 2-1 in the final of the last Copa Libertadores. “They are two very promising young players who have had an exceptional season and who like to score goals. Already from the first contact there was an affinity between them, they felt very at ease”, said Menezes, who will also have another diamond: Andrey Santos, a 19-year-old midfielder who belongs to Chelsea and who played on loan at Nottingham last year. semester Forest.

Between the two South American giants he will try to take third place Uruguay, Olympic champion in Paris 1924 and Amsterdam 1928, who in this competition will wear a celebratory t-shirt for the 100th anniversary of the first of those medals. Unlike the other teams, the Italian team will be led by the coach of the senior national team: Marcelo Bielsa.

The man from Rosario has formed a team whose base is made up of players who last year were Under 20 world champions in Argentina, such as goalkeeper Randall Rodríguez, defenders Sebastiano Boselli and Mateo Ponte, and the forwards Luciano Rodríguez and Matías Abaldo. Like Mascherano, Bielsa will also have only 22 men: striker Cristian Olivera was withdrawn at the last minute because his club, Los Angeles FC, revoked his authorization to travel when the deadline for submitting applications had already expired lists.