Argentina beat Paraguay 1-0 on Monday, securing a place in the Copa America knockout stage. Papu G\u00f3mez scored in the 10th minute.<\/p>\n
Argentina topped Group A with seven points from three games after the victory at the Man\u00e9 Garrincha stadium in Brasilia.
\nLionel Messi earned his 147th cap for Argentina in this match, equaling the record set by veteran defender Javier Mascherano.<\/p>\n
After a 1-1 tie with Uruguay, Chile sits in the second place in the group with five points (5). Paraguay has three points (3), Uruguay has one (1), and Bolivia has none (0).<\/p>\n
Captain Messi had to deal with a side that featured six changes in the starting lineup while chasing his first major title with the national team.<\/p>\n
Defenders Germ\u00e1n Pezzella and Nicol\u00e1s Tagliafico, midfielders Rodrigo de Paul and Leandro Paredes; and forwards Sergio Aguero and \u00c1ngel di Maria started.\u00a0Nicol\u00e1s Otamendi, Marcos Acu\u00f1a, Leandro Paredes, Giovani Lo Celso, Lautaro Mart\u00ednez, and Nico Gonz\u00e1lez were left out of the starting lineup.<\/span><\/p>\n Argentina made a solid start despite the adjustments. Messi found Di Maria on the right side of the field early in the game, and the experienced winger escaped the Paraguayan defenders with a pass to G\u00f3mez. The striker beat Paraguay goalkeeper Antony Silva with a powerful shot.<\/p>\n In the first half, Argentina forced Silva to make crucial stops, but the team\u2019s vigour dropped in the second half, as it has in several recent games.<\/p>\n Argentina\u2019s final group-stage match will be against Bolivia on Monday. On Thursday, Paraguay will face Chile. Each five-team group will advance to the next round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Argentina beat Paraguay 1-0 on Monday, securing a place in the Copa America knockout stage. Papu G\u00f3mez scored in the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":32771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[696,660,55,1714,984,487,1654,389],"class_list":["post-10263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-angel-di-maria","tag-argentina","tag-brazil","tag-copa-america","tag-fifa","tag-lionel-messi","tag-paraguay","tag-sports"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}