Say It Ain't So

Messi fatigued?

I'll be interested to see how Mexico, with its extremely intensive preparation schedule, fares compared with teams who used a much lighter regime, especially Argentina. So much of a team's success comes from players collectively being on the same page, the way, to take but one example, Xavi and Messi always seem to be taking signals from the same brain. It's only logical that more familiarity helps in this regard. Of course, the albicelestes have lots of reasons they could fall short (no Zanetti, shaky midfield, deranged coach), so if it doesn't work out well for them, we can't necessarily chalk it up to a lack of friendlies ahead of the big match. But I'd be interested to see if there's a general corrolation between performance (measured against expectations) and the amount of time each team spends together.