As the Copa America ends with Chile crowned champions, WhoScored.com reflect on the best eleven from the tournament based on the statistics.
Three Premier League players are featured, including two currently playing for Manchester United, including Angel Di Maria, Marcos Rojo and Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez, who scored the winning penalty in Saturday’s final against Argentina.
Marcos Rojo
The Manchester United defender received a 7.20 scoring from WhoScored.com after aiding Argentina trip to the final. They did their part keeping a clean sheet throughout the final versus Chile, but it all went down the toilet during penalties. He scored the opener against Paraguay in the semi-final.
Angel Di Maria
Nothing up a 7.90 rating, second best to Lionel Messi on 8.43, Di Maria’s lack of luck struck again in the final. After just 20 minutes of play he was forced off through injury and is now likely to be out of action for up to a month. You can’t help but feel his presence would have helped Argentina win the Copa America without penalties.
Bit of a baseless comment saying “You can’t help but feel his presence would have helped Argentina win the Copa America without penalties.” Those first 20 minutes were very even and Chile quite clearly have 4 players in this 1st 11 to Argentina’s 3 including Alexis who has been ignored by your post which is strange as he plays in the PL or are you just talking to United fans?
The game started out great, but it turned into a shit-show after 30 minutes precisely because Di Maria went off.
Chile won the game because they were able to effectively shut Messi down. The poor guy couldn’t take 2 steps before being tackled from every direction possible.
With Di Maria on the field, that would be a terrible strategy (not my words, Sampaoli’s) because it would expose them to Argentina’s other dangerous talents. Just existing takes markers off Messi and facilitates open play, exactly like Neymar do for him and Suarez at Barcelona.
But without Di Maria, Argentina is missing a lung,(Lavezzi is ordinary at best) and going after Messi is not just risk-less but a great way to suffocate the other one.
So the result was a disgusting 0-0 game. At least Chile showed that they deserved it in Penalties, they were perfect.