Argentina might face Nigeria without Messi

They say desperate times call for desperate measures and that just might be what Argentina set out to do against Nigeria on Tuesday with Jorge Sampaoli looking to ring the changes against the West African team in the final round of games,National Daily learnt.

Argentina have just one point from two games having drawn with Iceland and lost to Croatia.
The fallout of this has led to reports of the players calling for Sampaoli’s sack, but it seems he’s still in charge– for now.

The 58-year-old is also set to make some drastic changes to the side including dropping Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero and Willy Caballero.

This report comes from an Argentine publication ‘Ole’ which published a picture revealing Sampaoli’s starting X1 against Nigeria at their training base in Bronnitsy on Saturday
In the image shared by the publication, there were scribbles on the notebook showed two seven-a-side teams facing each other, excluding Messi.

Messi has had a horrid tournament with no goals, no assists and very little in the way of contributing to his team’s success which contrasts severely from his perennial rival Cristiano Ronaldo who is joint top of the goalscoring charts with 4 goals. He is matched only by Romelu Lukaku who also has 4 goals from 2 games.