{"id":194332,"date":"2025-06-18T12:04:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T12:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194332\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T12:04:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T12:04:20","slug":"argentina-name-team-to-take-on-the-lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194332\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina name team to take on the Lions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Felipe Contepomi has named his Argentina<\/a> side to take on the British and Irish Lions<\/a> on Friday at the Aviva Stadium, with captain Julian Montoya<\/a> starting just days after losing in the Gallagher Premiership<\/a> final.<\/p>\n

The departing Leicester<\/a> Tigers hooker will lead a side that contains eight players from the Premiership in the starting XV, as they wait for their players still competing in the Top 14<\/a> to join the squad.<\/p>\n

The match will be the first meeting between the two sides since 2005, where the Pumas<\/a> drew with Sir Clive Woodward\u2019s Lions 25-25.<\/p>\n

It will also be the first time that the Lions will play a match on Irish soil, before they fly to Perth over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Fixture<\/p>\n

British & Irish Lions<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

British & Irish Lions <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Argentina <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Having only had a week with each other, and still without some of their star players, Contepomi discussed the difficulties his squad have faced in the build-up to the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a challenge, definitely, for both teams, but for us, we haven\u2019t been together for seven months and getting together in two training sessions with a lot of new faces has been a challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the guys have been magnificent and they have made a lot of effort to grab hold of that new information and the more experienced players are trying to take them through with all that information and go into training with a lot of intensity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are very pleased with how they adapted to their first week for the newcomers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of preparing a game against a team that you don\u2019t know what they\u2019ll fire, for us, it\u2019s very good because we need to focus on ourselves. Having new players in the group, it has been good to really focus on what we want to do, how we want to do it, for them to start understanding or living the habits that we want to instil in our group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know all their players, and we expect them to be playing hard. They could miss a bit of cohesion, or not, because they are such top-level players, so they can click in one moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we expect a very tough and encouraging game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Argentina XV<\/strong>
15. Santiago Carreras<\/a> (vc)
14. Rodrigo Isgro
13. Lucio Cinti
12. Justo Piccardo
11. Ignacio Mendy
10. Tomas Albornoz
9. Gonzalo Garcia
1. Mayco Vivas
2. Julian Montoya (c)
3. Joel Sclavi
4. Franco Molina
5. Pedro Rubiolo
6. Pablo Matera<\/a> (vc)
7. Juan Martin Gonzalez
8. Joaquin Oviedo<\/p>\n

Replacements<\/strong>
16. Bautista Bernasconi
17. Boris Wenger
18. Francisco Coria<\/a> Marchetti
19. Santiago Grondona
20. Joaquin Moro
21. Simon Benitez Cruz
22. Matias Moroni
23. Santiago Cordero<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Felipe Contepomi has named his Argentina side to take on the British and Irish Lions on Friday at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-194332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114704277071528393","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}