Vamos! Argentina have just become the first country to go through from the Group Stage of the World Cup 2010 thanks to the impressive victory against the unsurprisingly resolute and hard working South Koreans! This victory was down to the sheer genius of Diego Maradona, the Argentina manager who initiated a match defining, masterstroke substitution to kill off any remaining challenge from the South Koreans! To be fair to the South Koreans, they were resolute and looked like equalizing or even overturning the Argentine until the aforementioned genius masterstroke decision from the legend himself! Maradona is also the first manager who deviated from the cowardice 4-5-1 formation to play the brave and attacking 4-4-2 Diamond formation, which is my personal favorite formation of all. Despite this crushing defeat, the South Koreans is pretty much in he competition and likely to join Argentina to go through from Group B. But how hard it would be depends on the match between Nigeria and Greece very soon from the time of writing.
The first half was utterly dominated by Argentina with plenty of pace from Angel di Maria, Gonzalo Higuain, Jonas Gutierrez, the free role Leo Messi, as well as the hard-working machine like Carlos Tevez who chased for practically for every ball no matter what. Argentina started the match all the way to the highest gear and they really dominated the match, playing the fabled Barcelonaesque football with plenty of pacey and swift dazzling passes on the pitch. Argentina, with their brave formation and attacking style were rewarded soon at the 16th minute when a Messi cross was turned to his own goal by South Korean striker Park Chu-Young. It was a perfect strike from the AS Monaco man, but he scored to the wrong goal. 1-0 to Argentina. At the 20th minute, Walter Samuel needed to be replaced with N. Burdisso, reminiscence to how Philippe Senderos of Suisse needed to be substituted early in the match against Spain. The extent of his injury is not known yet. Argentina domination continued when Higuain scored with a very nice header, the first of many for the night. However, Argentina was totally stunned when a terrible mistake by Martin Demichelis allowed Lee Chung Yong to pull one back right before half time. 2-1.
In the second half, the complexion of the match changed and Argentina were pinned back by South Koreans and the Koreans looked like scoring at anytime as Argentina stuttered, frustrated and started collecting yellow cards for silly reasons. This is despite the commentator stating in the first half that there will be no way back for S. Korea if Argentina is 2-0 up. It was bad as Jonas will also miss the potentially crucial next match against Greece due to a second yellow card in the tournament (if the Koreans managed to hold or defeat Argentina which at that time was a huge possibility). South Korea's goalkeeper Jung Sung Ryong also looked like he won't concede another goal.
However, Maradona showed the world why he's a genius manager when he decided at the 74th minute to replace the out of steam and larely anonymous Tevez in the second half for Sergio Aguero. This is what separates an ordinary manager with a genius manager. An ordinary manager would have brought on Diego Milito in desperation based on his exploits for his club. But, club and country football are two very different things and the fact that Aguero didn't have a good season with Atletico Madrid is irrelevant. One minute later, Aguero made a great run and was greatly involved in the attacking move involving Messi as well with Higuain tapping in after Messi had hit the post. 3-1 for Argentina. At the 80th minute, Aguero was at it again when he assisted Higuain to complete his marvelous hat-trick and utterly destroyed South Korea 4-1. With this, Argentina dominated again and at right after the goal, Higuain came off to be replaced by M. Bolatti the hero against Uruguay in the qualifiers which secured Argentina's qualification into the World Cup for Higuain's well deserved standing ovation. Aguero even managed to almost obtained a well deserved Argentina's 5th goal at the very last minute.
Amazing victory for Argentina, and they have qualified to the last 16 and are on course to even go all the way in the tournament. Now, the aforementioned ban of Jonas Gutierrez is no longer relevant and it is just like he's rested for the now dead rubber match against the Greeks in which Maradona is likely to experiment with his second team with the likes of Martin Palermo for example. For South Korea, this defeat doesn't mean that they won't go through as from their performance between the 45-74th minute, they are more than capable of beating Nigeria and join Argentina to the last 16. Again, how easy it would be for South Korea to go through depends on the upcoming match between Nigeria and Greece. Enjoy!
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