In the early hours of Friday morning, Argentina’s World Cup squad returned to its training facility at Bronnitsy, a few miles outside Moscow, in almost complete silence, the mood funereal. The country’s World Cup hopes hang by a thread: not of winning it, but of merely qualifying for the knockout rounds, of avoiding immense embarrassment.

A crushing 3-0 defeat to Croatia in Nizhny Novgorod on Thursday left Argentina reliant on others to stay alive in the tournament: the team’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, and his players must beat Nigeria in their final game, and hope that Iceland — the smallest nation to qualify for the World Cup — fails to beat Croatia.

This is not how Argentina’s summer was supposed to go. Boasting the world’s best player, Lionel Messi, a phalanx of outstanding forwards and a coach with a fine record at the international level, Argentina arrived in Russia with hopes of going one better than it had in Brazil four years ago, when it lost in the final, and winning its first World Cup since 1986. So, what has gone wrong, and what can be done about it?

Does it make sense to put all of the blame on the coach?

In his postmatch news conference on Thursday, Sampaoli could barely raise his eyes to face his interrogators. On half a dozen occasions, maybe more, he made it clear that only one person should take responsibility for the fact that Argentina was now on the brink of elimination: him.

“Had I set things up differently, they might have turned out much better,” he said. “I probably did not understand the match as I should have.”

Sampaoli made mistakes, without question, in terms of player selection, in terms of tactics, in terms of preparation. Following their tie with Iceland in the opening game, Argentina’s players only had three training sessions to get used to the system Sampaoli introduced for the game against Croatia, the most dangerous opponent in Argentina’s group. It looked it, too: against Croatia, Argentina had a defense left exposed, a midfield that was overrun, and an attack that was blunted.

“Had I set things up differently, they might have turned out much better,” he said. “I probably did not understand the match as I should have.”

Sampaoli made mistakes, without question, in terms of player selection, in terms of tactics, in terms of preparation. Following their tie with Iceland in the opening game, Argentina’s players only had three training sessions to get used to the system Sampaoli introduced for the game against Croatia, the most dangerous opponent in Argentina’s group. It looked it, too: against Croatia, Argentina had a defense left exposed, a midfield that was overrun, and an attack that was blunted.

There was an emotional failure, too. Sampaoli’s style has always relied a little on organized chaos: it was the relentlessness of his Chile teams that led him to such success with that country, and in no small way led to him being given the Argentina job. Against Croatia, though, cooler heads were required, particularly after falling behind in such unexpected circumstances, on a goalkeeping blunder. Sampaoli did nothing to help. He threw on attacking players seemingly at random, with little apparent design and to no obvious end. He proved incapable of thinking his way out of the problem.

Diego Simeone, the Atlético Madrid coach, described it as “chaos,” pointing to a “total lack of leadership” in a WhatsApp message to his assistant, German Burgos, that somehow went viral. Simeone, who played in three World Cups for Argentina, had been a contender to take charge of the national team before Sampaoli took the job.