Argentina's World Cup Squad: A Reunion Tour or an Ageing Team?

Argentina have landed in Kansas City with a squad that feels less like a national team and more like a reunion tour.

Seventeen of the 26 players were in Qatar. Seven of the XI that started the World Cup final in Lusail are expected to walk out again at Arrowhead Stadium against Algeria. Strip out Angel Di Maria, now retired from international football after bowing out as Player of the Match in the 2024 Copa America final, and the spine is virtually untouched.

This is Lionel Scaloni’s great strength and his looming problem.

The band stays together

No other major nation has held its nerve like this. Sixteen members of this group were there for Scaloni’s first trophy, the 2021 Copa America. Brazil, by comparison, have kept only 11 players from their squad five years ago, and that number includes three goalkeepers. England, from their Euro 2021 finalists, are down to nine.

Argentina have chosen continuity. Familiar faces, familiar patterns, familiar scars. Over the past half-decade, that stability has hardened into a brotherhood that has carried them through finals, extra time, penalty shootouts and every storm in between.

But time does not care for sentiment.

Nine players in this squad are the wrong side of 30. Emiliano Martinez. Rodrigo De Paul. Nicolas Otamendi. And, of course, Lionel Messi, who will turn 39 during his record sixth World Cup. This is not just an experienced team; it is an ageing one.

At the other end, the youth is thin. Only Giuliano Simeone, Valentin Barco and Nico Paz are under 25. The likes of Franco Mastantuono and Alejandro Garnacho have been left at home. The average age nudges past 29. For a side that will be asked to go deep again, that number matters.

Miles in the legs

The concern is not just age. It is mileage.

Argentina’s core has barely stopped. After winning the Copa America in 2024, 11 of Scaloni’s players then went straight into the Club World Cup last summer. For some, the last three seasons have blurred into one long, punishing slog.

Since the start of the 2024-25 campaign, Enzo Fernandez and Julian Alvarez have each played 121 games for club and country. That is an extraordinary workload for anyone, let alone players expected to define knockout matches at the highest level.

Alvarez arrived with an ankle issue that Atletico Madrid had to manage carefully during the run-in. Fernandez, only 25 and in peak physical condition, has covered so much ground that it feels inevitable those miles will present a bill at some point.

Alexis Mac Allister has already looked like he is paying his.

The Liverpool midfielder, who did not even have the extra burden of the Club World Cup, has still racked up 119 appearances for club and country across the last two seasons. He is expected to start against Algeria, but his Premier League form over the past nine months has dipped sharply.

Jermaine Pennant voiced what many Liverpool supporters had been thinking when he criticised Mac Allister during the defeat to Manchester City in February. Speaking to TalkSport, the former winger described him as “a shadow of what you are; it seems like your legs have gone,” and called him “literally a bystander” in that match. The words were harsh, but the observation struck a nerve.

Scaloni, though, is not for turning. Not yet.

Loyalty or evolution?

Seven of the World Cup final starters are in line to begin again against Algeria: Martinez in goal, Romero and Otamendi at the back, De Paul and Fernandez in midfield, Mac Allister in support of Messi. Lautaro Martinez, fresh from winning the Golden Boot at the 2024 Copa America, will lead the line with Alvarez still being handled carefully.

It is a team that knows exactly how to win. It is also a team that has been asked to keep winning without a pause.

The question now is whether Scaloni can afford to keep playing the hits, or whether he must remix the side on the fly.

His conservatism is most obvious at left-back. With Nicolas Tagliafico out, the obvious move would be to unleash Barco, the left-sided Strasbourg player widely expected to join Chelsea this summer. Barco has scored in two of Argentina’s last three games, operating slightly higher up the pitch, and as a natural left-back his energy would inject badly needed thrust down the flank.

Instead, Scaloni is poised to slide Lisandro Martinez over to left-back to deal with Riyad Mahrez. The Manchester United defender offers security and bite, but his instincts are those of a centre-back. He will not gallop forward with the same abandon, and Argentina will feel that trade-off every time they look up and see an empty left wing.

On the opposite side, the reshuffle is even bolder. Simeone is set to start at right-back, a role he does not know intimately. Nahuel Molina and Gonzalo Montiel are both on the way back from injury and not yet ready for 90 minutes, so Simeone becomes an emergency solution on the biggest stage.

It is a gamble wrapped inside a cautious selection policy: improvisation in roles, but not in personnel.

The Paz question

The real fault line in this squad, though, runs through midfield and the name Nico Paz.

At 21, Paz has lit up Serie A with Como across the past two seasons. Under the guidance of Cesc Fabregas, he scored 13 goals and delivered seven assists this season, dragging a club promoted in 2024 all the way to fourth place and into the Champions League. The league named him Best Midfielder at its end-of-season awards. Real Madrid, watching closely, are expected to trigger the buy-back clause in his contract.

He plays with a different rhythm to Argentina’s established midfielders. Head up. Always scanning. Happy to thread passes through tight gaps, happy to lose the ball and demand it again. There is a spark to his game that contrasts sharply with the more laboured, functional displays Mac Allister has produced of late.

Paz will likely begin this World Cup on the bench, hampered slightly by a minor knee issue he has been managing. But he represents something Argentina will almost certainly need as the tournament drags on: freshness, risk, a change of pace.

Scaloni has shown he can pull that trigger. In Qatar, he thrust a 21-year-old Enzo Fernandez into the starting XI midway through the group stage, a decision that transformed Argentina’s tournament and, ultimately, their destiny.

He may have to be just as ruthless again.

A brutal route and one last dance

The pathway does not invite caution. Win Group J ahead of Algeria, Austria and Jordan, and the Albiceleste will meet the runners-up from Group H in the round of 32 – possibly Spain, more likely Uruguay. Survive that, and a last-16 tie against the runners-up from Group D (currently Australia) or Group G (potentially Belgium, Egypt or Iran) looks manageable on paper.

Then the temperature spikes.

If the seedings hold, Portugal await in the quarter-finals. Messi versus Cristiano Ronaldo, one last time, with the world watching and the clock ticking on both careers. No one will be thinking about load management by then.

By that stage, Scaloni must know more than his best XI. He must know when to let go of the players who built this era and when to trust those who might extend it. His loyalty has delivered three trophies and a World Cup. It has made him beloved in a country that does not hand out affection lightly.

Now it may demand its price.

Argentina arrive in Kansas City with a squad that has nothing left to prove and everything still to lose. The old guard can carry them a long way again. But if this really is Messi’s last World Cup, can Scaloni afford not to roll the dice on the likes of Barco, Simeone and Paz when the moment comes?