Fabricio Coloccini and Jonás Gutiérrez are on the verge of the World Cup finals after being named in Argentina’s provisional 30-man squad.
The presence of Coloccini is a surprise after he barely played during the qualifying campaign, but he does have previous World Cup experience and has been in fine form during United’s Championship promotion campaign.
It is even more surprising given that Argentina boss Diego Maradona dropped Barcelona central defender Gabriel Milito to accommodate the United stopper.
Argentina play Canada on May 24 in their only warm-up before heading to South Africa to face Nigeria, Greece and South Korea in Group B.