Federico Fazio has leapt to the defence of Argentina team-mate Willy Caballero after the goalkeeper revealed he had received online threats following their World Cup loss to Croatia.
A blunder from Caballero led to Croatia's first goal in a 3-0 win, Ante Rebic ruthlessly capitalising on a fluffed clearance from the keeper. Argentina were staring at a potential early exit following that defeat, but edged out Nigeria 2-1 on Tuesday to book their place in the knockout rounds.
The win over Nigeria came with Franco Armani in goal ahead of Caballero, who subsequently shared an Instagram post claiming threats had been made against him and his family after the Croatia fixture.
In a news conference on Thursday, Fazio and Giovani Lo Celso showed their support for Caballero. "Football is full of mistakes, especially in a position as hard as goalkeeper," said Fazio.
"Without errors, every game would finish nil-nil. That would be boring, like seeing 11 robots playing against 11 robots. Football does not work that way and we are used to it.
"There are people who understand it and people who do not. We gave Willy all our support because we are very close to each other in this team, we all go to the same side and the most important thing is to help and support each other."
Lo Celso added: "Willy can count on having all our support. It is not nice to live in this situation and nobody here likes that, plus all the rumours we had to listen to about us, but the victory we got the other day [against Nigeria] helped him to get some relief.
"The most important thing was the win which got us into the last 16. That was our goal, and Willy got all our support."
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