Alexis Mac Allister might have been one of the stars of the World Cup with Argentina, but his time with the national team didn’t really get off to a good start.
The Brighton & Hove Albion star, who was bought from Argentines Jrs back in 2019 for €8m, already boasts 16 caps to his name at the age of 24, with his first game coming that same year in a game against Chile.
However, the two games against Mexico and Chile that made up his first two caps were simply friendlies, and there was hope down the Brighton star’s end that he could contribute in the World Cup qualifiers against Ecuador and Bolivia in 2020, as he explained in an interview with AFA Estudio, relayed by La100.
Unfortunately for him, despite Lionel Scaloni taking him to one side and telling him that he would play, he ended up out of the squad for the former and on the bench for the second.
The Brighton midfielder said: “Training passed, game day arrived and I was out. At that time it was a bit frustrating, then we went to Bolivia. After a while I had the opportunity to talk to him and he told me that although he had told me before that he wanted to start training, he hadn’t been impressed, he thought I wasn’t in the best shape and he ended up leaving me out.
“In this profession, telling the truth is something very important and as I said before, he approached me and had the balls to tell me the truth and that it was not right at that moment. After that, I remembered that a lot, then obviously I am very grateful for the confidence that he always gave me on the pitch.”
The Argentina manager then didn’t call him back up for two years until March 2022 for the last two qualifiers against Venezuela and Ecuador.
What happened after that, however, is history, as the Brighton player, despite being on the bench for the first World Cup game against Saudi Arabia, started the following six games, including the decisive final against France, in which he got an assist.
