Argentina's Golden Generation Faces Time at World Cup 2024
Argentina arrived in Kansas City like a band reuniting for one last global tour. Same frontman, same core musicians, same greatest hits. The set list, though, is starting to creak under the weight of time.
Seventeen of the 26 players who stepped off the plane were in Qatar three-and-a-half years ago. Sixteen were part of the 2021 Copa America triumph that first lit the Scaloni era. From the XI that started the World Cup final against France, only Angel Di Maria is missing, the winger having signed off from international football as Player of the Match in the 2024 Copa America final.
This is continuity bordering on defiance. While Brazil have retained only 11 players from their squad of five years ago – three of them goalkeepers – and England just nine from their Euro 2021 finalists, Argentina have doubled down on familiarity. Scaloni has built a dressing room that feels less like a national team and more like a brotherhood.
The question now is whether that brotherhood can outrun the clock.
A golden generation on the clock
Nine members of this squad are on the far side of 30. Emiliano Martinez. Rodrigo De Paul. Nicolas Otamendi. And, of course, Lionel Messi, who will turn 39 during his record sixth World Cup.
At the other end, there is barely a glimpse of tomorrow. Only three players – Giuliano Simeone, Valentin Barco and Nico Paz – are under 25, with the likes of Franco Mastantuono and Alejandro Garnacho left at home. The average age nudges past 29. For a team that has played almost non-stop football for three years, that number matters.
The mileage is brutal. Eleven of Scaloni’s players went from the 2024 Copa America straight into last summer’s Club World Cup. Since the start of the 2024-25 campaign, Enzo Fernandez and Julian Alvarez have each racked up 121 games for club and country. One hundred and twenty-one. It is little wonder Alvarez had to be managed carefully through the final weeks of Atletico Madrid’s season with an ankle issue. As for Fernandez, 25 or not, nobody runs that hard for that long without a bill eventually landing on the table.
Alexis Mac Allister already looks like a case study in the cost of success. He missed the Club World Cup, yet still managed 119 appearances over the past two seasons. His form for Liverpool has dipped sharply across the last nine months, and he heads into Tuesday’s opener against Algeria expected to start but under scrutiny.
Former Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant summed up the mood when he spoke to TalkSport after criticising Mac Allister on social media during February’s defeat to Manchester City. “I was watching the game and I was frustrated and I tweeted… I was angry. It was constructive angry… I touched on that, ‘after your injury in pre-season, you’ve come back a shadow of what you are; it seems like your legs have gone’. In that [City] game, he was literally a bystander, he didn’t really get into it at all and that’s what I touched on, it was an observation.”
Those are not the words you expect to hear about a midfielder tasked with driving the world champions through another gruelling month.
Scaloni’s loyalty vs the future
Scaloni, though, is not blinking. At Arrowhead Stadium against Algeria, seven of the 2022 World Cup final starters are set to line up again. It might have been as many as 10 had Alvarez, Nicolas Tagliafico and Nahuel Molina not arrived nursing minor injuries.
Cristian Romero and Otamendi will marshal the back line. Fernandez, De Paul and Mac Allister are primed to form the midfield. Messi, of course, will drift between the lines, conductor and executioner in one. Up front, Lautaro Martinez – Golden Boot winner at the 2024 Copa America – is expected to stand in for Alvarez.
This is a team that has forgotten how to lose on the big stage. It knows pressure, penalties, extra time, the weight of expectation. It knows how to suffer and survive.
But can it evolve?
Nowhere is Scaloni’s cautious streak more obvious than at left-back. With Tagliafico out, the obvious call would be Barco. The Strasbourg left-sider, widely tipped to join Chelsea this summer, has scored in two of Argentina’s last three games, often operating a little higher up the pitch. He is, by trade, a left-back. At 21, he offers legs, aggression and the sort of vertical running this ageing side increasingly lacks.
Instead, Scaloni is ready to turn to Lisandro Martinez. The Manchester United defender is an outstanding one-on-one marker and a natural choice to track Algeria’s veteran talisman Riyad Mahrez. Defensively, the logic is clear. But Martinez is a centre-back by instinct. He will not raid the flank like a specialist full-back. Argentina gain security, lose adventure.
On the opposite side, Simeone is set for a baptism of fire in an unfamiliar role at right-back. With Molina and Gonzalo Montiel still building up fitness after recent injuries, Simeone will deputise until one or both can handle more than a cameo. It is a pragmatic patch, not a long-term solution.
The Paz question
The real fault line between past and future runs through the middle of the pitch and the name Nico Paz.
The 21-year-old has lit up Serie A with Como over the past two seasons. Under the guidance of Cesc Fabregas, he scored 13 goals and laid on seven assists this past campaign, driving a newly promoted side to fourth place and Champions League qualification. Those numbers earned him the Best Midfielder award at Serie A’s end-of-season ceremony and stirred talk that Real Madrid will trigger the buy-back clause in his contract this summer.
Paz plays like a man who has not yet learned to be afraid. He looks forward, threads passes others do not see, takes risks in possession and forces the tempo. Set that against the more conservative, laboured version of Mac Allister seen this year, and the contrast is stark.
For now, Paz will likely start the tournament on the bench, not helped by a minor knee issue he has been nursing. But he is the kind of player who can change the feel of a side in 20 minutes. Scaloni has shown before that he can make that sort of call. His decision to introduce the then-21-year-old Fernandez into the starting XI midway through the group stage in Qatar transformed Argentina’s World Cup. He trusted youth once and was rewarded with a star.
He may have to do it again.
A brutal path and a final act
The route in front of Argentina is laced with danger. Win Group J ahead of Algeria, Austria and Jordan, and a heavyweight lurks immediately in the round of 32: the runners-up from Group H, potentially Spain, more likely Uruguay. Survive that, and a last-16 tie against the runners-up from Group D (currently Australia) or Group G (likely one of Belgium, Egypt or Iran) looks kinder on paper.
After that, the temperature spikes. If the seedings hold, Portugal stand in the quarter-finals, dangling the prospect of a World Cup showdown between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, almost certainly their final meeting on this stage.
By then, Scaloni will need more than sentiment and loyalty. He will need clarity. He will need legs.
He will need to know whether this story ends with the same old heroes, or whether one or two fresh faces – Barco on the flank, Paz in the middle, Simeone out wide – are ready to write the last great chapter of Messi’s international career.
