World Cup 2018: Uruguay’s Rodrigo Bentancur and Matias Vecino should be a perfect pairing – so why aren’t they? Scouting report

The Serie A duo offer a natural balance in centre midfield but their double act has failed to entertain in Uruguay’s opening two games, a consequence of their rigid setup

On the face of it, Inter’s Matias Vecino and Juventus’s Rodrigo Bentancur make the perfect modern midfield partnership. Vecino is the bulwark in front of the gates, stubborn and stoic and better on the ball than you imagine. He allows Bentancur to spread his creative wings, to rove and probe and link with his forwards.

Yet in this Uruguay team, the combination is stultifying. “Rodrigo Bentancur is taking too long on the ball,” scowled an unimpressed Martin Keown during their opener with Egypt. “Pass it forward. It’s simple: give the ball to the players in front of you that are better than you.”

Bentancur took on some of that advice against Saudi Arabia, showing a few measured forward passes which instigated occasional forays and looked impressively composed for a 20-year-old at his first World Cup. But he plays at a crawling pace which should be within VAR’s remit to admonish on the big screen with a snore emoji.

Incredibly Vecino is even less dynamic, and given Uruguay’s dominance of the ball in both their opening games his defensive capabilities have not been needed. Picking Vecino against Saudi Arabia is like driving with the handbrake on and the engine off, uphill.

Neither player should shoulder much blame. They are playing their natural games, dropping deep to take the ball off their centre-halves’ toes only to look up and see a continent of land between themselves and their strikers, Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani. Like England, this is a team without a natural No10, but unlike England’s attempts to cover the cracks with surging No8s, Oscar Tabarez has unashamedly left a gaping cavern in his team.

Rodrigo Bentancur played at an excruciatingly slow tempo (EPA)

BBC pundit Philip Neville compared Uruguay to Atletico Madrid in their approach, but that doesn’t quite hold up. Atletico’s wide midfielders like Koke drift infield and Antoine Griezmann drops deep to fill that No10 hole. Uruguay’s wingers and forwards rarely do, and it makes the options for Bentancur and Vecino extremely limited.

The obvious counter argument is that Uruguay have won two games, conceded no goals, and virtually no chances either. They are not setup to break down deep defences, or to blow teams away, or to entertain the masses, yet as they go deeper in the tournament and their opponents improve, Bentancur and Vecino may yet prove to be the perfect platform to counter-attack. Time will tell, but on this evidence it won’t be much fun finding out.