Brand Studio for AFA
The expected time arrived.
The men's beach soccer team debuts in the twelfth edition of the FIFA World Cup on Thursday against Tahiti.
The team returns to FIFA's top competition after three absences, since its last World Cup was in Portugal 2015, where it was eliminated in the group stage.
This time the team had a difficult group, against three teams that have reached the podiums in different editions of the highest FIFA competition.
In addition to the debut against Tahiti, the team will face Iran on Saturday the 17th and will complete the first phase matches on Monday the 19th against Spain.
In dialogue with the press of the Argentine Football Association, Luciano Sirico, winger of Hernán Magrini's national team, who was in Portugal nine years ago, remarked: “That World Cup in Portugal showed me the sport in all its greatness, the organization of the tournament , the stadiums, everything that surrounds the biggest competition in the world, there is nothing like it.
In the World Cup we face rivals with whom we have never competed and that is the most beautiful thing, the idea that you are playing against the best teams and players in the world.
“I am very happy to play in a World Cup again and experience all that again.”
And he added: “While it is true that the group is difficult, I think that any other group would have been just as complicated.
All the teams earned that place and left other great teams out of the tournament.
Each match will have different forms, due to the variability of the opponents' play, but fundamentally they will all be very physical and will require a lot of concentration.
The three rivals of the Group once stood on the World Cup podium.
That speaks of the quality of these selections.”
Argentina's rivals in the Beach Soccer World Cup
The Tahitian team participated in eight editions of the Cup before this one, managing to be runner-up on two occasions, Portugal 2015 and Bahamas 2017. It hosted the tournament in 2013, where it achieved fourth place.
He played 28 games in World Cups with 14 wins in three halves, 1 in extra time, 2 on penalties and 11 losses.
In the history against Argentina they have one match, on September 25, 2013 in Tahiti, in a quarterfinal match, with a 6 to 1 victory.
For its part, the Iranian team participated in seven editions of the World Cup, the first of which was in 2006, and had its best performance in the 2017 edition, the last one in which it participated, where it achieved third place.
He has played 26 games in the FIFA competition, with six wins in three halves, one in extra time, one on penalties and 18 losses.
They qualified for the Cup undefeated in their qualifying round.
He had no confrontations against Argentina so far.
Meanwhile, Spain, qualified by the European Qualifying Tournament, played 4 games with two wins and two losses.
He participated in eight editions of the Cup, reaching the quarterfinals in four editions (2005, 2007, 2009 and 2021, achieving fourth place in the 2008 edition of France, and runner-up in Tahiti 2013. In World Cups he played 33 games , with 17 victories, one of them in extra time, and 16 defeats. They faced Argentina only once, on July 24, 2008, in France, in a quarterfinal match, with a 2-0 victory.