May 27, 2002

GENEVA (Reuters) - Argentina coach Marcelo Bielsa has a way of lacing his news conferences with profound, often short and sharp statements about the shape of his and other teams as well as wider World Cup issues.

But he is now the first to recognise that the only thing that matters is each match on the path to the coveted title of world champions that Argentina will be hoping to tread for the third time this year.

"In the end, we all know, the only important thing is the matches... All the rest of this (circus), we've just got to go along with it," Bielsa said as he contemplated the expectations his team have raised among Argentina's fans and supporters worldwide.

Bielsa's team dominated the South American qualifiers, winning 13 and losing only one of their 18 matches.

Argentina will be defending an unbeaten run of 15 matches when they meet Cameroon in a World Cup warm-up friendly in Geneva on Wednesday night.

"Everything that happens now will be evaluated when the World Cup comes along," Bielsa told reporters at Argentina's hotel in Nyon, outside Geneva.

"This is not important in itself, but rather in relation to what will happen in the World Cup."

He said that if there was certain pressure that Argentina had to handle as one of the favourites for the title, it was "the result of the standing the players in the team have gained with their clubs and which I think is fully justified."

He added: "But we ride with it. It neither generates excessive optimism nor does it generate an added burden.

"And it comes from the repercussions football has and the need there is to interpret events before they happen."

SIMILAR OPPOSITION

Argentina, the bookmakers' favourites, are in the so-called 'group of death' - alongside Nigeria, England and Sweden - in the first phase of the South Korea and Japan finals, which start on May 31.

In order to prepare for these opponents, Argentina have organised friendlies against Wales, which finished 1-1 last month, Cameroon on Wednesday and Germany in Stuttgart on April 17.

"There is a similarity in the rivals we have chosen for these friendlies and those we are going to meet in the World Cup," Bielsa said.

"Germany and England are (world) powers, Cameroon and Nigeria are African and Wales belong to British football."

Where the meticulous Bielsa's plans can go awry is with the unexpected - injuries that have hit some of his leading players since their brilliant qualifying campaign and in the run-in to a long, demanding season.

Bielsa purposely rested a number of first choice players so he could look at fringe members of the squad at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in February.

But in the last week he has lost defender Roberto Ayala and striker Hernan Crespo to an injury list that already included Diego Simeone, who has almost recovered from ligament surgery last year, and Nelson Vivas, whose World Cup hopes were dashed last month with the need for a similar operation.

"In a base squad of 20 players, you always have three or four missing," said Bielsa. "In this case there are three or four players (missing) who had established themselves as leading representatives of the team."

Bielsa hopes, nevertheless, to field against Cameroon an approximation of the side he will put out against Nigeria for Argentina's first World Cup match in the Japanese city of Ibaraki on June 2.