I wonder how Iran will approach this? Only joking!

They went with a nine man defence against Nigeria, with a sole isolated front man and made no attempt to attack.

Argentina went with a very defensive looking 3-5-2 in the first half against Bosnia & Herzegovina , looking much better when switching to 4-3-3 after the break, with the introduction of Gonzalo Higuain. Surely coach Alejandro Sabella  did not make the formation decision just on the basis that Higuain was not ready for 90 minutes, it must have more to do with his belief that 4-3-3 leaves too much space for the better teams to exploit.

My concern with Argentina is that they are a bit of an odd mix, fantastic offensive talent in Messi, di Maria, Higuain and Aguero, plus a bunch of centre backs! Of course they are more than that, but Javier Mascherano, Ezequiel Garay, Hugo Campagnaro, Marcos Rojo and Federico Fernandez all play central defence for their clubs and it seems a queer blend. It is also strange that they are still messing with the formation so much at this stage of proceedings, all in all I have my doubts about them, but they seem highly unlikely to be tested today, certainly not defensively .

Argentina are also a group used to facing packed defences on a regular basis at club level, so will not be seeing anything new today, I am not sure that Iran will change their gameplan too much even if they concede, at least until late, but they are not used to this level of competition and coming into this with 24 hours less recovery time than Argentina is also to their disadvantage. Once behind I could see them tiring late in the game , it is very draining and hard to concentrate for 90 mins (180 in total) against quality opposition, when you are on the backfoot the whole time . Space will open up and that will go double if they make some attempt to chase the game.

Like I said, i have concerns about Argentina, but just not today. They have scored six of their last nine goals between the 40th and 67th minute and it should again be through this "middle" period that they take real control of this match.

Hard to think of an angle to use this , but I would not mind giving up one goal if Argentina were say already leading at the circa 45-50 minute mark, but I feel it is best to keep this simple and for my "from the school of the blindingly obvious" selection of the day.