Netherlands boss Van Gaal laughs off ‘stupid’ Lionel Messi question ahead of Argentina clash

Argentina reached the last-16 by seeing off Australia, whilst the Netherlands dispatched the USA with relative ease.

One of the ties of the tournament so far is now set to play out on Friday evening.

Argentina head into the game with just one loss to their name in over three years of football.

However, Louis van Gaal is looking to go 12 games unbeaten at the World Cup, which would be a record if his side pick up the win later today.

To achieve that record, though, Van Gaal and co. must stop Lionel Messi. And when he was asked how the Netherlands are going to do that, the former Manchester United boss had this to say:

“We’re not going to reveal any plans to you - it would be pretty stupid of us to do so. But it’s not that difficult to come up with an answer as to how to stop him. You might want to block and close the passing lines. I can’t see this creating too much of a hoo-ha,” he told reporters ahead of the match.

Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni also revealed that they have a few tactical options up their sleeves as well: “We’ll see what happens with Lionel tomorrow. We’re used to our opponents coming up with something different. We don’t want to jump to foregone conclusions. We might come up with a few tactical differences of our own.

“We have certain nuances. We can do something different to hurt them. And if they decide to man-mark Lionel, we’ll keep it in mind, too,” he stated.

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