The gambler

The Champions League Final last night, won by Inter, illustrated some of the positives and negatives facing Argentina at this summer's World Cup.

On the one hand, there was a man of the match performance from Diego Milito, who not only scored twice (he's now put the finishing touch to three straight trophy winning games for Inter), but showed what an intelligent player he is. Operating, in effect, on his own, Milito provided something of a masterclass in how to play the 'lone striker' role. He challenged, he harried, he made runs and he held the ball up for Wesley Sneijder and Samuel Eto'o. He bagged a brace too, as mentioned above.

Diego Milito, in form

So going into the World Cup, while Milito is clearly in the best form of his life, he is still likely to find that he is playing second fiddle to Gonzalo Higuain. No great issue with that, Higuain is playing well and scoring regularly, but as Diego Maradona has favoured a lone striker, why not give this job to Milito?

In fact why doesn't Maradona just mirror the tactics and formation that Jose Mourinho deploys to such great effect with Inter? Maradona certainly has the players at his disposal, several already well drilled into playing a certain way. Milito operating as a lone striker, with Aguero and Messi adopting free roles just behind, as Eto'o and Sneijder do for the Milan side, could be a winner.

On the other hand though, Jose Mourinho is savvy enough to understand how to make this formation work. He has a very good, if not outstanding, back four, just like Argentina, but utilises a two man defensive screen in front of this, with one player particularly effective in covering the back four. Esteban Cambiasso. Yes, him again.

Maradona will invariably put a huge amount of faith in the defensive work done by Javier Mascherano, and rightly so, he's excellent at this role, but why not consider including Cambiasso in there as well?

Okay, there is always an argument to say that Argentina have such an armoury of attacking options that they should play with five forwards and score ten goals in each game. Go for the gung ho pretty stuff. That might well happen, but you have to be able to defend as well.

Watching Martin DeMichelis for Bayern last night, I saw the same things stand out in his game that I always see. Tackling is a real strength, he's rarely beaten in one on one's, but his positioning is suspect and ask him to deal with a ball bouncing anywhere in front of him and there's trouble.

Martin Demichelis; bounced

Of course Cambiasso won't be there, that's not going to change, so Maradona will have to make the best of what he has selected. Ultimately it's his call and he may well get it right, but I suspect that failure to at least reach the semi finals will see the names of those not at South Africa thrown at Diego.

He's took a big gamble. Comments welcome.