ESPN’s Taylor Twellman on Argentina’s “Sore Loser” Behavior in WC Loss to Spain

Taylor Twellman did not need a windup. Asked about how Argentina handled losing the World Cup final, he went straight at it.

"What a disgrace the end of the game was," he told Rich. "It's a sore loser mentality. I hate it."

Two details drove the reaction. The first, Twellman said, he did not even know while he was texting Rich during the match: apparently not a single Argentina player was made available to the media in the scrum afterward. The second was the ceremony itself, and he encouraged anyone who missed it to go find the photo.

Spain were getting their medals. Argentina's players turned their backs.

Twellman anticipated how that critique would land coming from a retired player, and he said it before anyone else could.

"Maybe I'm old school," he said. "Maybe this is the part of my life where now I'm the old guy getting off my lawn."

The difference is that he has actually done the hard version of this. Twellman lost a lot of finals. By his own count, he is one of four or five players in MLS history to lose four MLS Cups, three of them consecutively. Nobody has to explain to him what that walk off the field feels like.

"You still shake the hand of the opposition," he said. "I struggle coming from that world."

He was careful not to overreach on what he was asking for. "I'm not saying you need to go over and hug them and kiss them and all that. No."

He was less careful about naming a name.

"After the game, Paredes, what are you doing, dude?" Twellman said. "It's just a loser mentality to me. I struggle resonating with it."

What bothers him most is what it overwrote. Argentina had been the most watchable story of the tournament. Extra time goals. Heroics that kept Messi's run going. Back-to-back World Cup finals.

"All of that, and yet that's the picture I got to deal with?" Twellman said. "If that was my teammate, if that was my team, I'd have a tough one standing by that. It really bothers me."