Experts in civil wars, but outsiders in foreign wars? The winning rate of South American teams in warm-up matches is less than 30%, all thanks to Messi

The European and African World Cup preliminaries are in full swing, but the teams that have finished the World Cup preliminaries are not idle. For example, the teams in South America are busy looking for teams from other continents to conduct warm-up matches. Seven South American teams, including Argentina and Brazil, have played in the past two days, but in the end they handed over a record of 2 wins, 3 draws and 2 losses, with a winning rate of only 28.6%. The praise of "There are no underdogs in South America" ​​has been challenged by reality.

The performances of the 7 South American teams were polarizing. Among them, Argentina's 6-0 sweep of Puerto Rico was the only highlight. Messi made two assists to unlock the 398th career assist milestone. Lautaro's double assist as a substitute showed the depth of the striker. However, this big victory was limited in its persuasiveness because of the huge disparity in strength between the two sides. After all, the opponent's world ranking was only 155th, and the gap with Argentina was really too big.

In sharp contrast to Argentina's victory was the performance of other teams. The one with the biggest disadvantage is undoubtedly five-star Brazil. They took a 2-goal lead early in the Kirin Cup and were beaten by the Japanese team. In the end, they lost 2-3. It was the first time in the history of the team that they lost to an Asian team. Ancelotti also suffered his first defeat in office. Paraguay, another traditional South American powerhouse, visited South Korea to challenge South Korea and ultimately lost 0-2. Uruguay played against Uzbekistan, which qualified for the World Cup for the first time the day before, and won 2-1. It was the only South American team to defeat an Asian team.

Among the other teams, Bolivia lost 0-3 to Russia, which has been unable to participate in international competitions for several years, Colombia tied with Canada 0-0, and Ecuador drew with Mexico 1-1.

There is no doubt about the intensity of the South American qualifiers. With the advantage of the world rankings, the saying that "there are no weak teams in South America" ​​has become more and more popular in recent years. However, at least from these warm-up matches, it is not difficult to find that, except for Argentina, the other South American teams did not show the imaginary advantages when facing opponents from other continents that were not stronger than themselves. Instead, they felt a bit like "experts in civil war, but outsiders in foreign wars".