Newly appointed Jamaica Reggae Boyz head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson believes a 3-0 scoreline might have flattered Argentina, insisting his team was made to pay for a loss in concentration in the defeat at the Red Bull stadium on Tuesday.
Argentinean superstar Lionel Messi came off the bench to score twice as the Albiceleste, who, in truth, looked comfortable despite holding a slim 1-0 lead, blew the game wide open in the last 10 minutes.
By the time the world-famous number 10 entered the fray, in the 56th minute, Argentina were already 1-0 up courtesy of Julian Alvarez’s tidy finish in the 13th minute. from there they had struggled to find real goalscoring momentum, that is until Messi entered the pitch.
After stinging the palms of Jamaica goalkeeper Andre Blake with an early attempt, the forward made no mistake blasting his shot well to the left of the keeper, when he got another opportunity, to double the lead in the 86th minute. However, sloppy play in midfield led to the dangerous player taking possession at the edge of the area.
Three minutes later, there was real anxiety when the wily forward was brought down just at the top of the 18-yard box. Those concerns were proven valid when Messi picked himself up and scored the resulting free-kick. Again the Jamaicans might well feel dissatisfied with their defensive play, as Messi found space through a somewhat disheveled wall to beat Blake again. The match was the first for Hallgrimsson and he believes despite the errors they were a few positives.
“We lost 3-0 and you are never happy to lose. Three, zero is a big number but I don’t think it reflects the game on a whole,” Hallgrimsson said.
“It does not reflect the performance of our players, I think we showed an excellent team performance for 80 minutes and we lost a little focus in possession that led to the first and the second goal and then from that lost more focus for the third goal and that cannot happen,” he added.
“Those were the negatives from the match. We kept them from creating goal-scoring chances, more or less, until the 80th minute. After 10 minutes we were finding our feet but after that, we were comfortable with how we played our defensive game.”