Defending champion Argentina has been drawn in Group J alongside Algeria, Austria and Jordan for the FIFA World Cup 2026. | Photo Credit: AFP

Argentina is a contender to successfully defend its World Cup crown, but its chances will be undermined if coach Lionel Scaloni relies too much on the players who triumphed four years ago, Argentine great Daniel Bertoni told AFP.

Argentina will once again be led by its talisman Lionel Messi, with 16 other players from the 2022 squad included for the tournament being co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.

“I think Argentina is a candidate for the title, given our record of reaching the final six times and winning three of them,” said the 71-year-old Bertoni.

“But if we believe we will be champions again due to our name, and on what we have accomplished in the past, that is a mistake.

“The thing that can really kill Argentina is the coach relying too much on the players who won them the crown four years ago.”

Bertoni, who scored in Argentina’s 3-1 win over the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup final in Buenos Aires and was part of the squad four years later that exited in the second round, is also worried about Messi’s fitness.

Messi has been named captain with the expectation that he will have recovered from the hamstring issue that forced him to ask to be substituted last Sunday during his club Inter Miami’s Major League Soccer match against Philadelphia.

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“He is still a pivotal player,” said Bertoni.

“But he is close to 40 years old, he will be 39 on June 24, and you have to see how he is physically when he turns up.

“He is no longer playing at the top level club-wise and also he will miss Angel Di Maria, who, after Messi, was crucial at the 2022 World Cup.”

Passage of time

Bertoni, who played in Europe after the 1978 triumph for clubs including Sevilla and Napoli, said being defending champion brings its own pressures, as he knows from 1982.

“It is a huge pressure,” he said.

“Everything depends on the state of the squad, and the ability of the coach to bring together two realities: to impress on the players they are world champions, but that it is imperative they go out there and put up a serious defence of it.

“At the 1982 World Cup we thought because we were world champions we could win it again with Diego Maradona and other new players.

“However, it is always tough, everyone wants to win it.”

The triumph of Bertoni and his teammates, including Daniel Passarella, Mario Kempes and Osvaldo Ardiles, on home soil took place under the gaze of military dictator General Jorge Videla, who had seized power from Isabel Peron in 1976.

The junta’s human rights abuses, including the torture and disappearance of political prisoners, tarnished the victory for some.

There have been concerns expressed over this year’s edition due to some of the policies of the Trump administration.

Bertoni, though, says the USA squad will only have one thing on its mind, just as he and his teammates had in 1978.

“At the time we did not really know what was going on in the country,” he said.

“We knew there was a military government that was detrimental to the nation, that a kind of guerrilla war was going on, but we did not know about the disappeared, we learned about that later with the passage of time.

“I think players go to a World Cup to play, and to show what they know how to do.

“We are athletes, and in that capacity we are only responsible for what we do on the pitch.”

Published on May 29, 2026