The Argentine soccer team world champion in Qatar 2022 will celebrate this Thursday for the first time in a stadium the third star with a great party and a friendly match against Panama.
The renovated Monumental stadium, with a capacity for more than 83,000 spectators, will be the venue for the match that will begin at 8:30 p.m. and will be televised on Public TV and TyC Sports.
However, the celebrations of the World Champion team will begin at 4:00 p.m. and end after the game, with the expected delivery of the trophy that captain Lionel Messi will offer to the public.
Three months after the historic final in Qatar against France, the team led by Lionel Scaloni will appear before the Argentine public for the first time with the three-star shirt on the AFA shield, amid great expectations.
The second opportunity to see the world champions will be on Tuesday the 28th at the Madre de Ciudades stadium, in Santiago del Estero, where Argentina will host Curacao.
More than a million and a half people tried to get the approximately 40,000 tickets that went on sale last week.
The other half of the tickets were destined to family and friends of the campus, and to the commercial commitments of the AFA with its sponsors.
The “heroes” of Qatar will meet again with the “albicelestes” fans, winners of FIFA’s “The Best” award for the best fans, after the historic popular mobilization on December 20 in the streets of the city of Buenos Aires and the Buenos Aires suburbs.
More than five million people then came out to celebrate the third star, which ended the 36-year streak without world titles since Mexico 1986.
After the festivities, most of the 26 footballers who participated in the conquest quickly returned to their respective clubs abroad and were unable to enjoy the eternal affection of the public so much.
Therefore, from the AFA they decided that the first FIFA window 2023 was to play two games in Argentina to continue the celebration.
Thus, Panama will be the guest at a party that will have a soccer game as an excuse.
The Concacaf team even traveled to Buenos Aires with an alternate squad and without its main coach (Thomas Christiansen), who stayed in Panama to prepare for another game with the usual squad.
Scaloni, who finally signed his new contract until after the next World Cup in 2026, took advantage of this reunion with his managers and added new squads with a view to the future.
With Alejandro “Papu” Gómez as the only absentee, the coaching staff called the rest of the 25 protagonists of the title plus the footballers who were part of the cycle and were left out for various reasons.
These are the cases of Giovani Lo Celso, Nicolás González, Nehuén Pérez, Emiliano Buendía and Giovanni Simeone.
In turn, the coach from Santa Fe included young players like Lautaro Blanco, Máximo Perrone, Facundo Buonanotte, Valentín Carboni.
Outside of the world champions, the fans’ illusion was also to see Alejandro Garnacho, but the young Manchester United star -of an Argentine mother and a Spanish father- suffered a major injury just the week before the call-up and was left out .
The squad began work on Monday at the AFA premises in Ezeiza, which had a permanent guard of fans who stationed themselves at the door to obtain a photo or a signature from their idols.
The fury for the champions was also reflected on Monday night, when Messi went out to dinner at a grill in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo and his presence gathered thousands of people at the door of the premises in a few minutes.
For this reason, the way in which the footballers will arrive at the Monumental is still unknown and it is not ruled out that in order to bypass the crowd they will have to go back to the helicopters that were used on that afternoon of December 20, when they could not get close to the Obelisk. , epicenter of the festivities.
After this double date, the team will meet again in June, while on the next FIFA date scheduled for September, the South American Qualifiers will begin against Ecuador, at home, and Bolivia, as a visitor, for the 2026 World Cup, which will take place. will do in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Tomorrow’s game will also be an opportunity for Messi to reach another personal mark with the national team’s jersey: the 35-year-old star from Rosario has scored 98 goals in 172 official matches and is just two shy of a hundred.
Messi is already the player with the most games played, the one who played the most World Cups (five) and the all-time striker for the Argentine national team.
This will be the third crossing between Argentina and Panama, with two “albicelestes” victories as a precedent.
The first match was a friendly with Diego Maradona’s local team in Santa Fe (3-1) in 2009; and then they crossed paths in the 2016 Copa América Centenario in the United States (5-0), with a hat trick from Messi, a goal from Sergio “Kun” Agüero and another from Otamendi, who was also in the first match.
–Possible formations–
Argentina: Emiliano Martinez; Nahuel Molina, Cristian Romero, Nicolás Otamendi and Nicolás Tagliafico; Rodrigo De Paul, Enzo Fernández and Alexis Mac Allister; Lionel Messi, Julián Álvarez and Ángel Di María. DT: Lionel Scaloni.
Panama: Jose Guerra; Iván Anderson, Edgardo Fariña, Gilberto Hernández, Richard Peralta and Kevin Galván; Cristian Quintero, José Murillo, Jorge Serrano, Martín Morán; and Alfred Stephens. DT: Julio Cesar Dely Valdes.
Time: 20:30
Stadium: Monumental
Referee: Christian Ferreyra (Uruguay)
TV: Public TV and TyC Sports.
