2026-07-20 10:50:20
Lionel Scaloni will “always cherish” what Argentina have achieved at the 2026 World Cup.
La Albiceleste’s dream of defending the trophy was dashed by a 1-0 loss to Spain after extra time in Sunday’s (19.07.26) final in New Jersey but the coach expressed pride in the way his team battled “until the very end”.
Scaloni said: “[I feel] sadness, but also pride in knowing that we gave everything. There’s a lot I could say about how we got this far, but now is not the time. I will be eternally grateful to these players for giving us another World Cup final and for competing until the very end. Spain were the better side; that is the truth.
“I’ll always cherish what they’ve done and what it means to have come this far. We have to value that enormously because it’s incredibly difficult. We know how to win, and we have to know how to lose as well. Today we showed that. We lost the match and we need to accept it. But that doesn’t mean we’ll just forget everything we did to get here.”
Scaloni has led Argentina to three major trophies since taking charge in 2018 and explained that he will “take some time to think” about his future with the national team following the agonising defeat.
He said: “We tried right until the end to give everything as a coaching staff, and the players did the same. I think it’s only fair that I take some time to think about it. This place is wonderful, simply wonderful. It’s a dream to be here. Not in my wildest dreams did I or any of us in the coaching staff think we would be here.
“So you need a lot of things. You have to reset and build a group like this again. Recreating something like this is a huge task and it hurts. It hurts deeply. I’m sorry.”
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