Nov 14,2024
Argentina have made three changes to the side that hammered Italy for Friday's clash with Ireland at Aviva Stadium.
Forwards Pablo Matera, who was suspended last week, and Guido Petti replace Santiago Grondona and Franco Molina, respectively, while Matías Moroni comes in at centre for Matías Orlando.
Los Pumas beat Italy 50-18 in their opening Autumn Nations Series game in Udine on Saturday.
Connacht wing Santiago Cordero is not in the matchday 23.
Ireland, looking to bounce back from a deflating 23-13 loss to New Zealand last Friday, will name their team at 2pm.
"In this case Santi didn't make it but he had a great game last weekend and we know we can count on him and he's training really well.
"But we made other selections, it's more tactical or strategy, Santi Carreras came back and we think he can also give us something from the bench."
Captain Julian Montoya is set for his 104th cap as the South Americans look for a first win against Ireland in Dublin.
"The first thing after the game in Italy was to recover as quickly as possible and put ourselves in physical condition for the challenge that is coming," said the 31-year-old Leicester Tigers hooker.
"Knowing that it is a short week, knowing that we do not control it either.
"But, well, what do we do with what we have? It is to try to do the best possible with the conditions we have. And we are not going to use [the six-day turnaround] as an excuse.
"Then we know that it is a very physical game. Ireland play a lot of football, play well.
"They are a team with a lot of cohesion, also a very physical team.
"And then, well, we will consider the game with the strategies we have. We have to put ourselves in position to be ready to generate the opportunity to win this game, which is what we all want."
Argentina have recorded wins over France, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in the last few months and are currently in fifth place in the world rankings.
"Results gives you confidence, definitely, but it's more, for us, the progress is trying to do, what we say we are going to do or trying to, what we train or what we train to do and then go and do it on match day," added Contepomi, who spent 10 years at Leinster as a player and coach.
"That's the tough thing in rugby or in any sport. So for us the confidence comes in doing.
"We evaluate maybe different to how people from the outside evaluate us. I know you go a lot on results, we go more on performance and we have certain things that we look at that it doesn't matter about results.
"I give you a very simple example: we beat South Africa in Santiago but it came up to the last minute where [Manie] Libbok missed a penalty. What if he would have got that penalty?
"Would have that changed our way of evaluating ourselves? No, we don't change the way we evaluate ourselves.
"Now from the outside, you change the evaluation because you say, 'oh you beat the double world champions', you know.
"For us it's the same, how we evaluate. So we understand that, the way we evaluate, we know we are in progress because the things we say we are going to do, we are doing them more frequently than not on game day."
Argentina: Juan Cruz Mallia; Rodrigo Isgro, Lucio Cinti, Matias Moroni, Bautista Delguy; Tomas Albornoz, Gonzalo Bertranou; Thomas Gallo, Julián Montoya, Joel Sclavi; Guido Petti, Pedro Rubiolo; Pablo Matera, Juan Martin Gonzalez, Joaquin Oviedo.
Replacements: Ignacio Ruiz, Ignacio Calles, Francisco Kodela Gomez, Franco Molina, Santiago Grondona, Gonzalo Garcia, Santiago Carreras, Justo Piccardo.
