Europe's World Cup qualifying campaign for Russia 2018 might be just preparing for kickoff, but elsewhere in the world, the process has been underway for some time, and there will be few -- if any -- bigger fixtures on the international calendar this week than Argentina vs. Uruguay. For new Argentina manager Edgardo Bauza, it will be a baptism of fire. His first game in charge is one of the world's oldest international clasicos.
The issues that have beset the Argentine Football Association recently have affected the domestic league and the national team, and it will surely feel like a relief for the players to get out onto the pitch and play again. The managerial change doesn't solve the underlying issues at the AFA, but of most immediate importance on the pitch is of course that Lionel Messi remains part of the team.
When Messi announced -- perhaps "threatened," given that he's reversed it -- his international retirement after the Copa America Centenario final, fans and press in Argentina were for once united: suddenly, absolutely everyone agreed about his importance to the team. His return, when Bauza announced his first squad, has so far been less loudly heralded (one suspects because so many felt it was inevitable anyway) but the fans in Mendoza will get the chance on Thursday to show their appreciation; in spite of rumours across the Atlantic, he's been training normally and everything suggests he'll start.
Most observers expected that the Barcelona man's "retirement" from the team would only be temporary but all the same, his inclusion is a boost to Bauza, whose quest to improve the team would have been severely hampered had he even briefly had to cope without the side's most important player. It would also have made it much harder to stamp his authority on the team early on by excluding Gonzalo Higuain from the squad for this double-header.
Higuain has become unpopular among various national team regimes -- "there is no more persecuted player right now in Argentina," one op-ed declared -- that have tired of seeing him miss wonderful chances in tournament finals and his replacement in the squad, Atletico Mineiro's Lucas Pratto (a player Bauza saw at close quarters in the Brazilian league during his time in charge of Sao Paulo), has been admired by fans here since leading the line impressively for Velez Sarsfield in the Argentine Primera. All the same, it's one thing to drop the Juventus newcomer when you can still name the world's best player as part of the attack; it's another entirely if Messi makes himself unavailable.
One Juventus player who is very much part of the squad is Paulo Dybala, who is expected to start on Thursday night in the No. 10 role of a 4-2-3-1, with Messi on the right, Angel Di Maria on the left and Pratto as the focal point in the absence of the injured Sergio Aguero.
The tickets for this match sold out in just two days, even before Messi's return to the national team fold had been confirmed, and that level of support has encouraged the AFA to take the national team outside Buenos Aires, where crowds have been less enthusiastic in recent years. A cynic might suggest that going to Mendoza, on the other side of the country from the Rio de la Plata estuary, will also have the effect of making it harder for significant numbers of Uruguayan fans to travel to the game.
The visitors aren't without some issues of their own. Manager Oscar Washington Tabarez's health problems (he's undergoing treatment for Guillain-Barre syndrome) came to light during the Copa America Centenario but he remains in charge of the team and retains the support of the players as well, of course, that of football fans around the world. But the relationship between the national team and the association has recently been riven by an argument that makes even Argentina's recent issues seem a bit daft.
The argument over which company should provide the kits for the national team when the incumbent, Puma, contract ends at the end of this year is an interesting one. Uruguayan broadcasting giant Tenfield, who have a huge influence over football and many other sports in the country, currently holds the rights to the national team's shirts and subcontracted them to Puma, but Nike's offer -- direct to the Associacion Uruguaya de Futbol (AUF) -- dwarfed Puma's ($3.4m against $750,000).
With national team players appealing for all at the association to vote for the option which would put the most money into Uruguayan football, a vote last week means Nike will take over the kits from 2017 onwards. This might sound like a side issue at first glance, but it was far from ideal for the team's preparations for this match: players were threatening to step down if the deal wasn't changed.
On the pitch, Uruguay are in much better shape than they are in the boardroom; they sit top of CONMEBOL qualifying on goal difference ahead of Ecuador, who are the only team to have defeated them in the opening six matches. Fiorentina midfielder Matias Vecino, a recent incorporation to the national team, won't play due to injury, which is a shame for headline writers given that his surname means "neighbour" and the two countries are... well, neighbours.
In Vecino's absence, Uruguay's midfield is expected to be based around Egidio Arevalo Rios and Mathias Corujo, with Carlos Sanchez and Cristian Rodriguez providing width and a connection with Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez up front. It's perhaps with one eye on that strike duo that Bauza looks set to play Javier Mascherano and Lucas Biglia as a deep-lying midfield pair to shield the Argentine defence. Bauza has spoken of a desire to find balance, so it will be interesting to see how good a job Biglia in particular does of linking that deep midfield pair with their more attacking peers further up the pitch.
The fans who bought up the tickets so quickly are in for the latest instalment of a legendary rivalry in Mendoza as Argentina look to extend their head-to-head advantage, which currently stands at 88 wins to 59 with 44 draws. More importantly, though, the hosts will be eager to leapfrog the visitors in the qualification table with a win.
After an indifferent start a year ago under Gerardo Martino before the ship was steadied, it's a tough test for Bauza as the new man in charge.
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