World Cup 2014: Argentina Defeats Bosnia and Herzegovina

Argentina’s Sergio Agüero, left, and Ermin Bicakcic of Bosnia and Herzegovina battled at Estádio do Maracanã

RIO DE JANEIRO — Lionel Messi can never be the man Argentina wants him to be, since that man is Diego Maradona.

So as Messi competes in his third World Cup, his best hope to win over his countrymen is with victories. The first came Sunday night at Estádio do Maracanã, where Argentina opened Group F play with a 2-1 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The game seemed a microcosm of Messi’s Argentina career, in which he has for years been his country’s best player but rarely its favorite. His jersey was well represented in the boisterously pro-Argentina crowd, and the cheers were deafening when he was introduced and when, less than three minutes later, he created the opening goal with a driven free kick.

But in between ovations he was hectored by defenders, cajoled by the masses and, at one point, even roundly booed after wasting a chance in a 1-0 game.

Still, with one shimmering run across the top of the penalty area and a rocketed shot, Messi won the fans back.

The move took only a moment, but it reminded everyone of what Messi can offer with a tiny bit of space and a burst of uncatchable speed. Taking the ball on the right wing he accelerated past one defender and then nudged the ball around two more. Before anyone could yell for him to shoot the ball, it was gone, pinging in off the left post behind Bosnia goalkeeper Asmir Begovic.

As Messi tugged on his jersey and shouted with joy (or was it relief?), the fans danced. As he walked back to midfield for the restart, tens of thousands of them bowed toward his back.

Bosnia added a consolation goal by the American-born striker Vedad Ibisevic in the 85th minute, but that merely paused the adoration of Messi. There was no stopping it.

Bosnia’s first night at the World Cup could not have started much worse. A foul won far out on the left by Argentina’s Sergio Agüero set up a free kick. Messi curled the ball toward Argentina defender Marcos Rojo at the penalty spot, where he flicked it on in the general direction of a teammate. But the ball landed instead at the feet of Bosnia defender Sead Kolasinac, and when it got tangled between them, he awkwardly redirected it into his own net.

Less than three minutes in, Bosnia had been staggered. The team slowly steadied itself by coolly working the ball around, if only to keep it away from Messi, and went on to create some of the half’s best chances: Argentina goalkeeper Sergio Romero dashed off his line to stop Izet Hajrovic in the 13th minute and dived to his left to stop a point-blank header in the 40th.

The teams had met in a friendly in St. Louis in November, with Argentina using a similar five-back formation and two Agüero goals to produce a 2-0 win. But on Sunday, the five-back setup rarely looked defensive; the outside backs, Rojo and Pablo Zabaleta, were often farther forward than even Messi. The problem was that, except for rare occasions, Messi could not find the room to do much with them, or for himself.

The introduction of another striker, Gonzalo Higuaín, at halftime seemed an admission by Coach Alejandro Sabella that Messi needed some better options directly in front of him, or perhaps just someone else for the Bosnian defenders to worry about. But Argentina had qualified with ease in a 4-3-3 formation, and it soon went to work

Agüero found space on the left with increasing regularity, and that began to open the middle. After Agüero won a free kick in the 63rd minute, Messi skied it over the bar, and his fans booed. When he scored minutes later, all was forgiven.

Argentina is hoping this tournament finally brings out the best in Messi, who made his debut in the event with a goal in 2006 and then struggled under Maradona in 2010, when the team’s cluttered attacking formations never brought out his best. Messi, naturally, took more of the blame than Maradona.

Argentina bottomed out at the 2011 Copa América, where Messi was mercilessly booed by his home fans, but he has had a revival under Sabella. Sabella’s first move was to name Messi his captain, and his star responded by leading the team in scoring as it finished first in South American qualifying.

Sabella, a grandfatherly looking man, seems to have made it his top priority to put Messi at ease and in a position to succeed. (His daughter has been less supportive, reportedly telling a radio interviewer this spring that Messi “lacks some of the heart and soul” to play for Argentina, a notion that is quite common there.)

“I believe that Messi knows perfectly what his responsibility is with the national team,” Sabella told the Spanish newspaper Marca before the World Cup. “We all have pressure for being there. We have to leave him relaxed. You do not have to talk with him. He knows it all well.”

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Coaches have said and tried this before. José Pékerman, who is coaching Colombia at this World Cup, ushered a then-teenage Messi onto Argentina’s national team in 2005, at a time when Spain was recruiting him, and coached him in 2006, when he scored his only World Cup goal before Sunday’s.

Pékerman’s face brightened last week when he recalled those days, and he said, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing” when he first brought in Messi. Pékerman predicted that Messi, now in his prime at 26 despite a disappointing season at Barcelona, was ready to deliver the prize both the player and his country covet: a World Cup in Brazil to match the one Maradona brought home from Mexico in 1986.

“Without doubt,” Pékerman said of Messi, “he and the team can give Argentina another World Cup.”

Top 10 Economic Challenges for Modi's New Government

Narendra Modi is all set to be the next prime minister of India and the BJP is headed for the country's most resounding victory in 30 years. Mr Modi has promised to unblock stalled investments in power, road and rail projects to revive economic growth that has fallen to a decade low of below 5 per cent.

Here are 10 economic challenges that Mr Modi faces:

• Goods and Services Tax (GST): India's most ambitious indirect tax reform would replace existing state and central levies with a uniform tax, boosting revenue collection while cutting business transaction costs. GST, which could boost India's economy by up to two percentage points, has so far faced resistance from various states, including those governed by the BJP who fear a loss of their fiscal powers. The BJP aims to address state concerns and implement GST in an "appropriate timeframe". The Congress party would back the reform in opposition, a senior party member told Reuters earlier this month. The reform needs broad backing because it requires a change in the constitution.
• Central bank policies: A Reserve Bank of India panel in January proposed key changes including targeting consumer price inflation and making a committee responsible for monetary policy, and not the RBI Governor alone. This would require changes to the RBI Act. The BJP top brass has not spoken widely on the issue, but it will likely be a tough sell for RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. He has the backing of some global agencies like the International Monetary Fund. Mr Modi's government may also look to eventually separate the debt management function from the RBI, on the grounds that debt management sometimes conflicts with the central bank's monetary policy stance.
• Privatisation: The new government is likely to focus on selling its holdings in state-run firms that could raise much-needed revenues to trim India's ballooning fiscal deficit and boost economic growth. The rising stock market helped New Delhi raise more than $3 billion (Rs. 18,000 crore at 60 rupees per dollar) via stake sales in the fiscal year to March 31 - but that was only a third of the government's original target. The outgoing government announced plans to raise Rs. 56,900 crore through asset sales in 2014-15. This could help achieve a lower fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of GDP. These estimates may be revised by the next government.
• Subsidies: Mr Modi's government needs to examine how it subsidises basic commodities if it is to contain the fiscal deficit and avoid a ratings downgrade. Subsidies cost an estimated 2.2 per cent of India's GDP in 2013-14. The BJP in its manifesto said it will seek greater fiscal discipline without compromising on the availability of funds for development.
• Labour: The BJP wants to reform labour laws to boost job-intensive manufacturing and create as many as 1 crore jobs a year for young Indians entering the workforce. Changing the law would be politically tricky, though, and Mr Modi may seek to encourage competition between India's states to boost job creation.
• Defence: More foreign investment in defence would help India reduce imports, modernise weapons systems and speed up deliveries of hardware it needs for operations and training. India, the world's biggest arms importer, now allows 26 per cent foreign ownership in defence, and proposals to exceed that limit are considered only for state-of-the-art technology. The BJP has said it would allow some greater foreign investment in defence industries.
• Insurance: Attempts to raise the cap on foreign investment in India's $45 billion (Rs. 2.70 lakh crore) insurance sector, to 49 per cent from 26 per cent, have met resistance from employees at state-controlled insurers and their political backers. A BJP leader said in March the party had held talks with Congress to break the deadlock.
• Banking: The next government will need to help state-run lenders battling rising bad loans caused by the slowing economy, rising interest rates and project delays. Stressed loans in India - either bad or restructured - total $100 billion (Rs. 6 lakh crore), or about 10 per cent of all loans. Fitch Ratings expects that ratio to reach 14 per cent by March 2015. Rising bad loans threaten to choke the gradual recovery in Asia's third-largest economy, according to the OECD. The interim budget in February set aside Rs. 11,200 crore to help the sector meet key capital ratios, but analysts say more money is needed.
• Power: A BJP-led government may implement the so-called Gujarat model of distributing electricity that has been widely praised for delivering reliable 24-hour power supplies in the state. Mr Modi provided different power feeds to farmers, households, and companies instead of a uniform feed in his home state.
• Gas pricing: In January, India notified the new gas pricing formula that could double the prices of locally produced gas from April 1, but the poll regulator stopped the government from raising the prices until the elections are over. Reliance Industries and its partners BP and Niko Resources last week issued a notice of arbitration to the government seeking implementation of higher gas prices. The BJP-led government may review the formula on the lines suggested by a senior party leader last year and announce the date of implementation of new prices.

2014 Lok Sabha election: Exit polls point to Modi entry in Delhi

Ab ki baar Modi sarkar — that's the unanimous verdict of several exit polls as far as the big picture is concerned, with all of them predicting either that the NDA would get a majority or would get very close to it. The polls also agreed that the BJP would get its highest tally ever — the range varying from a little over 200 to just under 300.

Most polls also predicted that the Congress would be reduced to its lowest ever tally, though one of them, the Times Now-ORG poll, put the party's tally at between 111 and 138 seats, which means it could do better than the 114 seats it got in 1999. Another common factor in the polls was that the AIADMK and Trinamool Congress are likely to emerge as the two largest regional parties with 20 or more seats each.

While broadly agreeing on these trends, the polls were at sharp variance on the details. The Times Now-ORG poll suggested that the NDA would win 249 to 265 seats, which would leave it a little short of a majority though well within striking distance. At the other end of the range, the News 24-Today's Chanakya poll gave the NDA 340 seats, with the BJP alone winning 291 seats. If that comes true, it would be the first time after 1984 that any party would be winning a majority on its own.


The Congress' predicted tally too varies widely from a mere 57 in the News24 poll to a possible 138 in the Times Now poll. At 57, the Congress wouldn't just be reduced to a historic low, it would face its biggest crisis in post-Independence history.

Coming to the wide variance among pollsters, in Bihar, for instance, the Times Now-ORG poll gave the RJD no seats at all and the JD(U) 10 seats, while most other polls projected the RJD-Congress alliance as the primary challenge to the BJP and the JD(U) being squeezed out.

Similarly, in Karnataka, the Headline Today-Cicero poll suggested the Congress had a clear lead over the BJP and would win between 15 and 19 of the state's 28 seats. The News24 poll projected a diametrically opposite outcome with the BJP winning 20 seats in the state.

'Congress will be wiped out in Rajasthan'

In Rajasthan, the Headline Today and News24 polls predicted that the Congress could, at one end of the range of their projections, get completely wiped out, but the Times Now poll predicted that party could win 14 of the 25 seats in the state where it faced a rout in the assembly polls in December.

On AAP, most polls agreed that it would make its presence felt, in Punjab in particular, but yet again there was disagreement on just how well it would do. The News24 poll said the party could emerge as the single largest in Punjab, winning five of the 13 seats while others gave it no seats at all.

Exit polls have gone quite wrong on occasions, including most famously in 2004 when they predicted the NDA would form its third successive government. But they have also got it right on several occasions, including in the latest assembly polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.