The Burkina Faso plane landed in Buenos Aires a few hours before kick-off. On Saturday night at the Monumental, Argentina ran out 7-0 winners against a side made up almost entirely of U23 players. The contest was over by half-time: 5-0.<\/p>\n
Lautaro Mart\u00ednez opened the scoring in the 4th minute, Moumouni Diallo turned one into his own net in the 8th and Gianluca Prestianni added a third in the 12th, before Nicol\u00e1s Paz (34th) and Juli\u00e1n \u00c1lvarez (36th) piled on before the break. Franco Mastantuono (56th) and Giuliano Simeone (90th+2) completed the scoring after half-time. Three players marked their first international goals: Prestianni, Mastantuono and Paz. Lautaro, on 42 goals in 86 caps, is now the third-highest scorer in the history of the Albiceleste behind Batistuta and Messi. Scaloni used 22 players and handed first caps to Santiago Castro, Tom\u00e1s Palacios and Mat\u00edas Soul\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso, ranked 62nd by FIFA, had beaten the Central African Republic 1-0 on Monday in qualifying for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations. Their chartered flight to Buenos Aires, scheduled for Wednesday, was cancelled without notice by the operator; by Friday evening the delegation was still stuck in Casablanca with no carrier, until a replacement aircraft was found. The side fielded that evening drew almost entirely on an emergency U23 squad: most senior internationals refused to travel, Foot Mercato reports, which points to difficult travel conditions and the absence of a bonus. The website quotes the journalist Romain Molina: the Argentine federation keeps all the receipts from the tour, and Burkina Faso leaves with nothing.<\/p>\n
In front of a half-empty stadium, the Argentine press delivered its verdict without crowing. \u201cA shameful match\u201d, headlines La Nacion, which wonders what Scaloni could possibly learn \u201cfrom a match where the balance of forces barely existed\u201d. Clarin calls it \u201cmore than a friendly, a disgrace\u201d. Scaloni thanked the Burkinab\u00e8 players, who in his words \u201cdo football credit\u201d, and said he would pick stronger opponents if he had the choice.<\/p>\n
Messi, who arrived on Friday, did not play. His farewell comes on Tuesday at the Monumental, against Benin, ranked 93rd by FIFA. This 7-0 carries no lesson anywhere: a U23 side fresh off the plane from Casablanca measures nothing, and even the Argentine press draws no conclusion from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Argentina beat Burkina Faso 7-0 in a friendly at the Monumental on Saturday night, against a near all-U23 side that landed a few hours before kick-off. The Argentine press calls the match shameful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image-id":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image-id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ba_sport":[],"class_list":["post-4565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n