Argentine FA Pledges Support For Sampaoli

President of the Argentina Football Association, Claudio Tapia, has backed the much criticised national team head coach Jorge Sampaoli to lead the team to a respectable and reputable campaign at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia despite La Albiceleste’s embarrassing 6-1 defeat to Spain in a friendly game last week.

Sampaoli, who was head coach of the Chile Team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil helped the South Americans secure the ticket to the mundial despite a poor start but the team’s devastating performance in recent games have been noticed and have comeunder criticisms from the fans.

Aside from the defeat to Spain, the Albiceleste were embarrassed 4-2 by Nigeria, one of their group opponents in Russia in a friendly game last year.

But Tapia has refused to tow that line of fans and analysts who has called for his sack, and has even hinted that the former Sevilla gaffer will manage the team beyond the World Cup.

“Jorge’s project has a first stage of 5 years and does not depend on the performance of the team at the World Cup,” Tapia told Argentina online news outlet, ole.com.ar.

“It is important to put a lot of things in place to achieve the best result for the national team, but it has to be a long term project.

“On the other hand, there must be a good details of the work to be done to improve the current national team.

“We have to improve our youth system and reevaluate the existing one to discover players who will play for the team in future.

“That will give us the peace of mind that we have a new generation that can take over from the old players. We don’t want to repeat the same mistake in future.

“A lot of things have happened to us that make us think we have to reassess the project and that things have not been done well.”