Lionel Scaloni was impressed with Argentina’s adaptability during their battling 2-0 win over Angola.<\/p>\n
Lautaro Martinez put the reigning world champions ahead, before Lionel Messi made sure of the win eight minutes from time.<\/p>\n
Angola provided plenty of threat during La Albiceleste’s final match of 2025, with Cagliari forward Zito Luvumbo going close on three different occasions in Luanda.<\/p>\n
And despite naming a strong lineup, Scaloni handed debuts to Joaquin Panichelli, Gianluca Prestianni and Kevin Mac Allister.<\/p>\n
Argentina have won six of their eight games in the calendar year (drawn one, lost one), with their only defeat coming in their final World Cup qualifier against Ecuador.<\/p>\n
Scaloni was pleased with how his side overcame the challenge provided by Angola, though he acknowledged there was still room for improvement.<\/p>\n
“You always learn when you play a match against opponents you don’t know very well, and who are as physically strong as Angola,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n
“It was a good test, they have fast players. I think we were up to the challenge, even though at times, we could have done better.<\/p>\n
“We tried to play the match with our own strengths, and I congratulate the opponent for their good game as well.<\/p>\n
“I know this is a nation that is happy when things go well for us, and we are very grateful for the welcome we received.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Scaloni was impressed with Argentina’s adaptability during their battling 2-0 win over Angola. La<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2696789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[785161],"tags":[133793,23370],"class_list":{"0":"post-2696788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-argentina","8":"tag-argentina","9":"tag-23370"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/wakoka.com\/@news\/115559270079525271","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2696789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}