Chile & Argentina battle to end trophy drought in Copa America final

The Copa America probably has the final it deserves. Chile were the top team of the group stage, while Argentina, having promised so much without delivering once again, finally caught light in the semi-final with their 6-1 evisceration of Paraguay.

These are the two top scorers in the competition, the only two sides to win a game by more than a single goal, the two sides who have had the most possession and the two sides with the highest pass success rate. They are also two sides with a burning need for success: Argentina to end a run without a trophy stretching back to 1993; Chile are seeking their first ever success, 99 years after they took part in the inaugural Copa America.

It’s only partly because of the relative ease of their draw that Chile have had 70.7% possession. They’ve dominated every game they’ve played and have had the best pass success rate. They’ve found goals harder to come by in the knock-out stages, but have comfortably outscored everybody else in the tournament with 13 in five games so far.

They’ve been the most fluent side and, while incidents such as Gonzalo Jara’s poke on Edinson Cavani and Arturo Vidal’s unpunished shove to the face of Carlos Zambrano have caused unease, they’ve probably been the best side to watch.

Chile are a side with a basic philosophy of hard-pressing, pushing high up the pitch and trying to win the ball back as quickly as possible, so it’s indicative of the extent to which they’ve controlled possession that they’ve made the second-fewest tackles per game and the third-fewest interceptions. They’ve had so much of the ball, they haven’t had to win it back.

Argentina, who have had 65.7% possession, will clearly test that aspect of Chile’s game far more seriously. It may be that Argentina, who have had problems maintaining the balance between the front and back of the side, decide that in el Nacional, it makes sense to allow the hosts the ball, sitting back and looking to operate on the counter.

At Real Madrid, Angel Di Maria proved himself supreme at leading such attacks, judging when to run and when to release, and he has alongside him the pace of Sergio Aguero and the brilliance of Lionel Messi.

Messi, of course, is the unquantifiable aspect. All other discussion melts away beside him because if he plays well, Argentina win. He has a WhoScored.com rating 0.31 higher than anybody else in the tournament, and 0.7 higher than any opponent. He’s averaging 2.6 key passes per game, more than anybody in the tournament bar Chile’s number 10, Jorge Valdivia, and has completed 7.2 dribbles per game, more than twice as many as anybody else in the competition bar Jefferson Montero.

Even if Chile can somehow find a way to stop Messi, they are vulnerable in the air at the back - a result of them having the shortest average squad at the tournament. Only Colombia and Bolivia have won fewer aerial duels, and that means that set-plays are likely to be a major danger from a side that has won 15 aerials per game out of 25.6 contested. That’s a higher proportion than anybody else in the competition, even if the only set-play that has, so far, yielded a goal was Marcos Rojo turning in Messi’s free-kick against Paraguay.

Argentina look to have a greater range of attacking options than Chile, but the big question mark against them remains that defence, which has creaked alarmingly in both games against Paraguay. Both sides, in fact, have looked rather better going forward than at the back, which should lead to an engaging final. For somebody, the drought is about to break.