Reuters Soccer Blog
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Six reasons for Argentina’s 6-1 defeat to Bolivia
Argentine media allocate dozens of pages to football daily and the country has two 24-hour cable channels almost exclusively dedicated to the sport. Quite often it’s a struggle to fill all that paper and airtime — so much so that one of the TV channels passes away the afternoon with a programme in which the presenters play foot-tennis.
But on Thursday, there was more than enough to talk about. How did Argentina, supposedly revitalised by Diego Maradona, lose 6-1 away to Bolivia, one of the region’s weakest teams, in a World Cup qualifier?
Reuters Soccer Blog has come up with six possible reasons, listed in no particular order:
(1) Altitude. Considered the main culprit by many. Most people struggle to walk uphill on their first day in arriving in La Paz, at 3,600 metres above sea level. It is quite common to wake up during the night with a suffocating feeling and the general consensus is that roughly three weeks are needed for full acclimatisation. So imagine playing 90 minutes of football as soon as your arrive.
