CONNACHT’S SANTIAGO CORDERO will play no part in Argentina’s meeting with Ireland on Friday night, with Pumas head coach Felipe Contepomi confirming the 30-year-old was available for selection and his omission is purely a selection call.

Cordero came off the bench and scored a try in last weekend’s 50-18 defeat of Italy but hasn’t made the cut for Friday’s showdown at Aviva Stadium, with Contepomi naming his team earlier today.

The versatile back missed most of last season due to a serious knee injury, and is yet to rediscover his best form since returning to full fitness.

With Cordero not in the squad, the fit again Santiago Carreras takes his place among the Argentina replacements.

“No, he’s not injured, actually he’s in great form,” said Contepomi, who has made three changes to the team that started against Italy in Udine.

“Yes, there are a few changes but that’s because these guys compete really hard with each other throughout the week and we always try to field the best 23 that we think out of this group of 32 can represent us the best.

“In this case Santi didn’t make it. He had a great game last weekend and we know we can count on him and he’s really training really well, but we made other selections, it’s more tactical around strategy, [Santiago] Carreras has come back and we think he can give us something from the bench.”

Argentina have recorded some impressive results since Contepomi took over from Michael Cheika following last year’s World Cup, beating France, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia this year.

However the Pumas have never won in Ireland, with Friday an opportunity to take another scalp against a home side who will be determined to deliver a statement performance after last Friday’s defeat to New Zealand.

“Yeah, results gives you confidence, definitely, but it’s more, for us, the progress is trying to do, what we say we are going to do or trying to, what we train or what we train to do and then go and do it on match day,” Contepomi said.

“That’s the tough thing in rugby or in any sport. So for us the confidence comes in doing. We evaluate maybe different to how people from the outside evaluate us. I know you go a lot on results, we go more on performance and we have certain things that we look at that it doesn’t matter about results.

“I give you a very simple example, we beat South Africa in Santiago but it came up to the last minute where Libbok missed a penalty. What if he would have got that penalty?

“Would have that changed our way of evaluating ourselves? No, we don’t change the way we evaluate ourselves. Now from the outside, you change the evaluation because you say, oh you beat the double world champions, you know.

“For us it’s the same, how we evaluate. So we understand that, the way we evaluate, we know we are in progress because the things we say we are going to do, we are doing them more frequently than not on game day.”