The Argentine men's national football team has scheduled an international friendly against their Serbian counterpart, to be held between June 1 and 9 in the United States. According to the Argentine News Agency, this will be the national team's first match against a European side since the final of the last World Cup in Qatar 2022, where the team won 4-2 on penalties to secure their third star. The Serbian team is one of the notable absentees from the next World Cup, to be held in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, as they failed to advance from Group K of the UEFA qualifiers. It has been almost four years since the Argentine team last faced a European team, which will be a friendly before the 2026 World Cup. The match will take place between June 1 and 9, with the date and time to be determined, and will pit the current world champions against Serbia, who could not qualify for the North American event. This will be the fourteenth preparatory match the team coached by Lionel Scaloni will play between one World Cup and the next, facing teams from different continents, although never from Europe. The national team's opponents have been Panama, Curaçao, Australia, Indonesia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Angola, in addition to the friendlies against Mauritania and Zambia, to be held at La Bombonera on Friday the 27th and Tuesday the 31st, respectively, with Argentine victories in all 11 encounters. Meanwhile, this will be the second World Cup the Serbian team will miss since splitting from Montenegro, having participated in the tournaments in South Africa 2010, Russia 2018, and Qatar 2022, although they never made it past the group stage, and failed to qualify for the 2014 Brazil World Cup. Additionally, the Balkan country was left out of the tournament by finishing in third place in the tough Group K of the European qualifiers, with 13 points, which they had to share with England, who finished with a perfect score and no goals conceded, Albania, who qualified for the playoffs in second place, and Latvia and Andorra, who finished in the last two positions of the group.
