After the celebrations at the Monumental for the consecration in the World Cup in Qatar 2022 with the Argentine National Team, Alexis Mac Allister gave an interview in which he detailed how he got into the headlines and highlighted the attitudes of Lionel Scaloni in preparation for the contest.
“My first memory of the National Team is not very good… Speaking about that Qualifying date -first date heading to Qatar 2022-, I arrived in Argentina, it was the start of the Qualifying, we had Ecuador as a local and Bolivia as a visitor”, he began by explaining.
Along these lines, he added that “when the match in Ecuador arrives, a day before Leo Scaloni grabbed me and told me that I was going to have the chance to play as a starter, that I looked very good and that he wanted me to play as a starter before the last training session. “.
Through a dialogue with AFA Estudio, the former Boca Juniors reported that “training passed, the day of the game arrived and Alexis was away. At that moment it was a bit frustrating, then we went to Bolivia and I had to go to the bank.” . However, the coach did not miss the opportunity to explain the reason why he left him out of the starting eleven in his first games.
“After a while I had the opportunity to talk to him and he told me that although he had told me before that he wanted to start me, in training he had not seen me well, he thought that I was not in the best shape and he ended up leaving me out. Perhaps it was a moment that was not so good, but at the same time it helped me a lot to know that I had to be one hundred percent”, he commented.
Likewise, Mac Allister maintained that “I always highlighted the human more than anything. In this profession, telling the truth is something very important and as I said before, he approached me and he had the balls to tell me the truth and that he was not well at the time. I always stressed that part a lot about him. Afterwards, I am obviously very grateful for the confidence that he always gave me on the pitch.”
The MVP award that “won” Leo
In addition to standing out for his performance, Mac Allister was the only player from the Argentine National Team who received an MVP award besides Messi. “When I won it, they asked me who I would give it to and the truth is that I would give it to Leo. Everyone knows how important it is for us and all the things he does on the pitch, it’s very difficult not to give it to him,” he remarked. .
In this way, the footballer added that “the truth is that there were also very good performances, I think that Leo also named Juli in the game with Croatia, who could easily have won it. Everyone would have given it to Leo in every game, but the team had great performances“.
