Argentina stomped in Miami to easily beat Honduras 3-0 and thus stretch their unbeaten record to 34 games a few weeks before the start of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. One of the curiosities of the meeting was that the technical director of the Concacaf team He chose to make a personal mark on Lionel Messi.
The one chosen by the technical director Diego Vázquez was Hector Castellanoswho once the confrontation was over, provided behind-the-scenes details of this decision and the dialogue he had with the Flea when he realized that he was going to have a man following him throughout the playing field.
“Those were the instructions and what was trained. I had to do it and I think I did it in a great way. Coach Diego Vázquez told me that he was going to personally mark Messi from the first day of the concentration”, the Motagua footballer began his story. And then he added: “He gave me a player with very good characteristics in handling the ball, Jhow Benavídez. They showed him videos of Leo’s movements, while they showed me how a player marked him in a game he played against Girona when he was at Barcelona. They had me do those marking moves, and I had to follow him.”
Castellanos, during the note, revealed the reaction of the PSG player when he began to follow him very closely once the match had started. “He smiled, and he didn’t say anything else to me. He didn’t tell me more. Sometimes he would stare, perhaps a little annoyed. But he never said anything to me, no rudeness”.
Later, when recounting the exchange of shirts, he provided more details of his experience with the ’10′: “I took the shirt, I think I won a lot. We made eye contact and I was going to wave the shirt at him, but he said yes to me, because he had already said yes. when he told me ‘Are you really going to follow me the whole game?’. And yes, I tell you. There I took advantage, I had that crack there, obviously I was going to tell him. He was very nice and he told me yes. When he finished celebrating with the fans he gave me his jersey”.
“I won a couple of duels against him, taking advantage of speed and strength, but it was a mental duel. You looked at him and he stayed in an offside position, so he made me work twice as hard. I had to be aware of shrinking with my central line and him, that if he took a step back he would be enabled. I had to be looking at the center line and at him. He was brave, because the other players are very precise, they are great players”, Castellanos concluded.
Despite his words, Lionel Messi was the scorer of the game with two goals (Lautaro Martínez opened the scoring). The first was a penalty, after a foul on Giovani Lo Celso. The second, genius. He took advantage of an error from the Honduran fund to bite the goalkeeper Luis López.
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