Lionel Scaloni has chosen Gonzalo Montiel to start for Argentina against España in the World Cup final in Nueva Jersey, putting the 29-year-old into the first XI after a tournament spent mostly coming off the bench. It is the sharpest sign yet that Montiel has moved from specialist substitute to trusted starter on the biggest night.
That decision matters now because Argentina and España are due to play at 16:00 in Argentina, with Telefé carrying the match. For Montiel, it is another final and another chance to shape the result in a tournament where his minutes have often arrived late, but with purpose.
Scaloni’s choice also tells the story of how Argentina has used him. Montiel was introduced after the game had already tilted: at 2-2 against Cabo Verde, at 0-2 against Egipto, at 1-1 against Suiza and at 0-1 against Inglaterra. He did more than fill a role. Against Egipto, he helped create the comeback by setting up Lionel Messi. Against Inglaterra, he won the ball from Jude Bellingham in the move that led to Lautaro Martínez’s 2-1 winner. That semifinal work helped push him ahead of Nahuel Molina for this final.
The selection is not a surprise in the abstract. Montiel, who made his Argentina debut in 2019 in Madrid against Venezuela, has long been part of Scaloni’s structure and has now reached his 45th match for the national team and his 10th in World Cups. He has scored only two goals in regular time for Argentina, against Curazao in 2023 and Puerto Rico in 2025, which is part of the point: he is not being asked to decide games with flair.
What he has done is decide moments. In Qatar 2022, after a 3-3 final against Francia, he scored the decisive penalty and sealed Argentina’s title. That is why his return to a World Cup final carries more weight than a routine lineup change. He is the same player who can arrive from the bench and change the tempo, but on Sunday Scaloni is asking him to start from the beginning and carry that reliability into the first whistle.
There is one detail that keeps this from looking like a simple reward. Montiel spent most of the tournament as an option off the bench, not as a first-choice starter, and the final comes with no room for a cautious experiment. Scaloni has still picked him over Molina, which suggests the coach values the way Montiel has helped Argentina unlock tight games more than the continuity of his earlier rotations. If that reading holds, Argentina’s fourth star will depend not on a new idea, but on a familiar one executed one more time.
