Transfixed by Messi's magical skills

SOCCER ANALYST:Granted, Ireland stayed with Argentina but really the visitors were operating on a different level

THEY MAY have owned the football for most of last night but Argentina still needed a dose of luck to win.

Right, we better deal with the goal. What a shame to see Shay Given having to rush up to officials pleading for justice. Again. They don’t know Shay so wouldn’t be swayed, unlike the rest of us who know he only does that when he means it. Just like in Paris, the referee looked at his assistant, blinked, before awarding a goal to Angel Di Maria that should never have stood.

The Irish line was good and they seemed to allow Higuain touch the ball in the knowledge a flag would intervene.

Video technology anyone? The big screen wasn’t long flashing to John Delaney and Michel Platini in the stand. Not sure anyone has the appetite for that conversation again so soon.

I must talk about Lionel Messi. I couldn’t take my eyes off him and it was great to have such a player present for the start of a new era at the Aviva Stadium. The man is a genius. Seeing him perform in the flesh reinforces the obvious: his magical close control and those perfectly-weighted passes that so nearly split us open.

Early on he instantly killed a defensive header, skinned John O’Shea and chipped over.

Granted, Ireland stayed with Argentina, in what is a pre-season friendly, but really they were operating on a different level. The quality at the World Cup must have been special because this is a fine Argentine side. Di Maria was only a shade below Messi’s magnificence but the movement and close control of their whole team was far superior to our lads.

They set up completely differently from Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland with three attackers while Javier Mascherano acts as their only constant as a midfield holder. The rest of them were interchanging with full backs (if you can call them that), getting into the box as Mascherano initiated everything in front of his centre backs. The ball is always on the deck as well.

The result meant the usual narrow Irish back four was stretched and gaps duly appeared between them. Three strikers, especially if one of them is Messi, will do that to a side playing 4-4-2. They proved very good at pulling Ireland apart. When under pressure they reverted to 4-1-4-1, while it was 4-1-2-3 in attack.

I don’t think the hospitalisation of Trapattoni damaged the team performance. It was more a case of our system being too rigid and this is a lesson for the future. The midfield pair can usually disrupt the opposition’s tempo but they couldn’t get near Mascherano and the three front men were always pushing past them. We have never come up against such tactics, employed with such precision anyway, and we lacked the flexibility to counter it. Keith Andrews and Paul Green were made redundant as holding midfielders for long periods, although they both kept working when Ireland couldn’t retain any possession. Eventually Andrews pressed onto Mascherano but this forced Keith Fahey to come off the right wing to cover Ever Banega. This meant Gabriel Heinze could bomb down the wing at will and he got into the box on several occasions.

Then the dodgy goal went in and everything had to start again.

We were rushing the ball forward too quickly. Cillian Sheridan still looks a decent option in the air, contesting unwinnable balls that went his way, but no one put an early cross in on top of him. Despite Argentina’s suspect full backs, this never happened because we weren’t retaining possession.

In the second half Marco Tardelli changed it by leaving Paul McShane and Kevin Kilbane to mind the wide players while Fahey and Damien Duff came more into the middle to try to grab possession further up the field. Richard Dunne and O’Shea, when possible, pushed up to help.

The main positive was Fahey impressed off scraps around the middle. An inevitable reaction came from Messi, who stayed wide, where Fahey had been, and waited for possession to come. And then he ran with it. Greg Cunningham seemed destined for a baptism of fire, marking the Barcelona striker when he replaced Kilbane, but Messi wasn’t long heading for the stands to a deserved ovation. At least this evened matters up a little. It was no coincidence, I feel, we finished the game with two young prospects down the left. Cunningham did fine but Keith Treacy was excellent, almost creating an equaliser for Andy Keogh. I was impressed by Treacy as a schoolboy for Belvedere and he’s got stronger.

I couldn’t see how Ireland could haul themselves back into the contest but around the hour mark we got a glimpse of why Germany tore Argentina apart at the World Cup. Their discipline began to betray them. First, veteran centre back Walter Samuel belted McShane with an unnecessary shoulder and was lucky to avoid a caution. Then Mascherano went over the top of Duff. The result was an attacking Irish set-piece. This provided Ireland’s main avenue for an equaliser but the delivery was poor until Treacy took over at corners.

I mentioned yesterday this was not an ideal warm-up for the Armenia game. We will have much more possession in our qualifier next month so this experience will not be much use. It will, however, prove beneficial when Russia come here in October and Slovakia later in the campaign.