How do you even begin to make sense of what happened in Atlanta for the first 78 minutes? If you had been rating the Argentina players, 10 of them would not have scored more than five out of 10. They looked less like reigning world champions and more like a bunch of naïve pretenders — lacking energy, invention and half a yard of pace.
There was, however, one man who had seen a penalty saved in the first half but refused to let his shoulders slump.
A small detour here. Zlatan Ibrahimović is part of FOX Sports’ World Cup coverage alongside Thierry Henry. One of the most watchable aspects of this World Cup has been Ibrahimović’s analysis. He is not exactly known for lavishing praise on others, but when asked recently to name the five best players in the world, he reeled off five names without much hesitation: Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Lamine Yamal, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembele. Lionel Messi, he said, was in a different class altogether.
And that’s the thing. The more you watch him, the more all these debates about the modern-day GOAT seem almost laughable. They feel like forced attempts to create a conversation where there really isn’t one.
Here, in a game in which his team were dismal for long periods, Messi assisted Cristian Romero’s opener with a pinpoint cross before lashing home the equaliser. It was the fifth successive match in this World Cup where he had scored, joining Just Fontaine (1958), Jairzinho (1970), Gerd Müller (1970), Rivaldo (2002) and James Rodríguez (2014) as one of only six players to achieve that feat.
But Messi does not just score goals. As you saw after the final whistle, when his delirious team-mates repeatedly bounced him up and down while he smiled broadly, this is a man who has carried a team for well over a decade. Maradona did it for around half a decade before it broke him. Messi has been doing it for more than 12 years and counting.
Make no mistake, Egypt deserved something from this game. They were magnificent. Many teams, confronted by the prospect of Messi in full flight, would have adopted a safety-first approach and parked not just the bus but an entire fleet. Instead, Egypt played with courage and defended with remarkable discipline and resolve.
Romero’s header was probably the first time they got their offside trap wrong, and there will be plenty of heartburn among Egyptian supporters — and neutrals — about the VAR decision that ruled out what looked like a magnificent second goal for the Pharaohs.
There was a foul on Lisandro Martínez at the start of the move, but are we now going to retrospectively referee every challenge in a football match? VAR was introduced to intervene only when there was a clear and obvious error during the same phase of play. The foul occurred near Argentina’s penalty area, and Egypt then travelled the length of the pitch before scoring. It is a stretch to argue that it was still the same phase of play.
The look on Lionel Scaloni’s face when Enzo Fernández headed Argentina in front said it all. There was no wild celebration, only overwhelming relief — the expression of a man who had expected the depths of a dungeon but instead been shown blue skies.
Finally, there was Lautaro Martínez. Introduced from the bench, his half-hour cameo changed the game. He missed one glorious chance after another driving Messi run into the box, but when he broke clear again, most expected him to hold the ball up and wait for Messi’s support. Instead, he delivered a perfect cross into the six-yard box, and Fernández met it with a textbook header.
As impact substitutions go, they do not come much better.
Egypt, the kings of African football, head home with plenty to be proud of. As for Argentina, this Messi-led jailbreak is yet another warning sign. Egypt came desperately close to eliminating them, and neither Colombia nor Switzerland — whoever awaits in the last eight — will be particularly intimidated by what they saw.
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