Even if he may play in his final World Cup game on Friday night, Lionel Messi continues to be the focus of pre-game psychological tricks.
The PSG superstar was the subject of claims and counter-claim as the two coaches traded verbal blows in the phoney war.
Asked about how he planned to stop the 35-year-old, Dutch coach Louis van Gaal said: “We’re not going to reveal any plans to you – it would be pretty stupid of us to do so.
“But it’s not that difficult to come up with an answer as to how to stop him.
“You might want to block and close the passing lines. I can’t see this creating too much of a hoo-ha.”
🚨 Louis van Gaal has spotted Lionel Messi’s major flaw and already has plans for the Netherlands to exploit it pic.twitter.com/HOY0iM0wNY
— SPORTbible (@sportbible) December 6, 2022
But Argentine boss Lionel Scaloni wasn’t taking Van Gaal’s comments at face-value.
The question of how to prevent Messi from exerting influence over games has troubled every top coach on the planet during the past 15 years.
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And, when quizzed, Scaloni took the opportunity to put up his own smokescreen.
He said: “We’ll see what happens with Lionel tomorrow. We’re used to our opponents coming up with something different, we don’t want to jump to foregone conclusions.
“We might come up with a few tactical differences of our own. We have certain nuances.
“We can do something different to hurt them. And if they decide to man-mark Lionel, we’ll keep it in mind, too.”
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