Атланта хотноо болсон Дэлхийн аваргын тоглолтод Аргентин Египетийн эсрэг 0:2-оор хожигдож явсан ч тоглолтын төгсгөлд гайхалтай эргэн ирэлт хийж 3:2-оор ялалт байгууллаа.
Тоглолтын эхний хагаст Египетийн Яссер Ибрахим тооны харьцааг нээж, хаалгач Мостафа Шобейр Лионель Мессигийн торгуулийн цохилтыг хааснаар Аргентиныг хүнд байдалд оруулсан юм. Гэвч тоглолтын 79 дэх минутад Мессигийн дамжуулалтаар Кристиан Ромеро тооны зөрүүг багасгаж, дөрвөн минутын дараа Месси өөрөө хөндлөвч оносон хүчтэй цохилтоор тэнцээний гоолыг орууллаа. Эцэст нь Энцо Фернандес сөрөг довтолгоог амжилттай болгосноор Аргентин шөвгийн наймд шалгарч, Египет түүхэн боломжоо алдав.
Месси тоглолтын дараа багийнхаа өмнө хариуцлага алдсандаа уурлаж байсан ч эцсийн мөчид хувь тавилан өөрт нь тусалсанд баяртай байгаагаа илэрхийлсэн юм. Дасгалжуулагч Лионель Скалони түүнийг торгуулийн цохилт алдсан ч бууж өгөлгүй үргэлжлүүлэн тэмцсэн нь бусад тоглогчдод үлгэр дуурайлал болсныг онцлов.
Египетийн дасгалжуулагч Хоссам Хассан шүүгчийн шийдвэр болон Аргентины тоглогчдын дарамтад сэтгэл дундуур байгаагаа илэрхийлсэн бол Мостафа Зико Дэлхийн аваргын цомыг Аргентинд зориуд өгч байна хэмээн буруутгав. Хэдийгээр Египет нягт хамгаалалттай тоглосон ч Мессигийн сэтгэл зүйн тэсрэлт болон багийн хамтын ажиллагаа тоглолтын хувь заяаг эргүүлж чадлаа. Аргентин ирэх бямба гарагт Канзас-Сити хотноо шөвгийн наймын тоглолтоо хийх болно.
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The moment the final whistle was blown on a chaotic afternoon in Atlanta, the emotion surged through Lionel Messi. The moment he uncovered his face, you could see the tears were starting to flow.
Tears of joy? It looked more like cathartic relief. Nineteen minutes earlier his time on the World Cup stage seemed to be drawing to a close. He had missed a penalty and Argentina were 2-0 down to Egypt, their defence of their title seemingly in tatters. For a time in the second half, he looked dazed, as if unable to comprehend what was happening to him and his team.
And then something clicked. It was as if a fire had been lit inside him. And almost in the blink of an eye, Argentina were 3-2 up and Egypt, so close to making history by reaching the World Cup quarter-final for the first time, were out, victims of a classic remontada.
Messi made the first on 79 minutes with a cross that was headed home by Cristian Romero and scored the second four minutes later with a magnificent first-time shot that flew in off the crossbar. And even if he played no part in the third, a stunning counter-attack rounded off by Enzo Fernandez, it felt like the Messi effect was what had turned a hitherto shambolic Argentina performance around.
In the post-match mixed zone, he told reporters that he felt a sense of release, having felt “a lot of anger” at his second penalty miss of the tournament. “I felt like I had let the team down at an important moment,” the 39-year-old said. “But fortunately fate had something special for me at the end and I managed to score the equaliser.”
Messi turned anger into fire (Photo: Thomas COEX / AFP via Getty Images)
Even now, after all these years, there are underrated aspects to Messi’s game. One of them — something his detractors in Argentina used to say he lacked in comparison to the great Diego Maradona — is his ability to find another level, to draw upon something deep inside him, to summon something that allows him to bend his games to his will, rather than just his genius.
In the Fox studio, Thierry Henry said it reminded him of times playing alongside him at Barcelona. “You do not (want to) wake up the beast,” Henry said. “You look at his eyes and he switches. When he goes into that mood, it’s very difficult to stop him. This guy … when his team needs him, he raises his game. He starts to take the ball and dribble past almost everybody to try to change the game.”
That was how it felt inside the stadium. Egypt had coped with everything that had come their way. They were defending resolutely and counter-attacking incisively, backed up by a goalkeeper, Mostafa Shobeir, whose early penalty save from Messi had been just one of several impressive interventions. Argentina’s players and fans were looking to Messi for inspiration. But nothing was happening … until that force took hold of him.
He is an unlikely superhero. At first glance, he has nothing of the main-character energy of his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo, who departed the World Cup stage with a whimper a day earlier. Maradona said back in 2016, after Argentina’s defeat by Chile in the Copa America final, that Messi had “no personality” and lacked the “character” to be a leader. But leadership comes in different forms and Messi, after years spent feeling the burden of a nation’s expectations and those unfavourable comparisons with Maradona, has found the ability to answer his nation’s call and lead this team again and again.
He used to seem stoic, impassive — even, at times, in defeat. But at the final whistle he looked overcome, like someone who, having finally got his hands on the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, had not expected to experience this kind of emotional rollercoaster again.
Messi long after the final whistle (Getty Images)
When he was greeted by his team-mates and they danced in front of Argentina’s supporters, the tears flowed and he had to dry his eyes with his shirt. If anyone got their hands on that shirt, it could be marketed as another religious relic, the shroud of Atlanta.
In the space of five days, a kind of chaos has taken over Argentina’s defence of their title: first a turbulent 3-2 win over Cape Verde in Miami, after extra time, and now this, beating Egypt by the same scoreline. It is the kind of victory that can feel unsustainable: too many mistakes, too much overwrought emotion. Whatever people have said about the strength of Messi’s supporting cast and the team structure at times in recent years, their defending —exploited wonderfully on the counter-attack by Egypt —was terrible.
Egypt coach Hossam Hassan expressed deep unhappiness afterwards about the nature of his team’s defeat, accusing Argentina’s players of putting “pressure” on referee Francois Letexier. Mostafa Ziko, who scored Egypt’s second goal, went further, claiming that someone —it was not entirely clear who he meant —was “giving” the World Cup to Argentina.
But for 79 minutes, it looked as if Argentina were beyond divine intervention, VAR interventions or even a Messi intervention. Yasser Ibrahim headed Egypt into an early lead, after some slapdash defending from Lisandro Martinez, and then Messi missed a penalty for the second time in this tournament. Unlike against Austria, he at least got his shot on target this time, but it was saved superbly by Shobeir, a strong candidate for the tournament’s outstanding goalkeeper.
Henry made the point afterwards that the penalty miss — and the emotions Messi showed at the end — “reminded us that he is human”. He followed by saying that what his former Barcelona team-mate produced in the closing stages of that game “reminds us again that he’s not human”. It is a non sequitur, of course, not meant to be taken literally, but there are times when you are watching Messi and that sort of feeling is hard to resist.
The goal was a beauty, a bouncing ball struck deftly but powerfully in a crowded penalty area, taking him to eight goals at this World Cup, equalling the highest total since Gerd Muller’s 10 for West Germany in 1970. It was not so much that the skill involved was jaw-dropping — more that, in a high-pressure moment like that, with a split-second to react in a congested penalty area, faced by an inspired goalkeeper, there is nobody better at delivering technical perfection. And goalscoring, on top of the vision, the creativity, the dribbling and the slide-rule passing, is just one facet of this game.
Messi’s release after scoring (Photo: Elsa/Getty Images)
“I spoke to the guys on the bench, the ones who are watching him (Messi) and unable to believe what they’re saying,” Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said afterwards. “I told them to use him as an example, as a role model. After missing the penalty, he kept asking for the ball, kept running, kept trying again and again. It gives me la piel de gallina (goosebumps), to be honest. But it’s not just Messi. I don’t just want to talk about Messi. It’s all part and parcel of what this team is about.”
So much of the time, it is all about Messi. But the winning goal, crowning a remarkable comeback, was all about his team-mates: a counter-attack that saw the ball sprayed out to the right by Julian Alvarez, crossed perfectly by substitute Lautaro Martinez and met with a wonderful header by Fernandez, sparking those wild, frenzied celebrations on the pitch and in the stands alike.
At that point, Messi looked shattered —emotionally exhausted but physically too and perhaps grateful not to face half an hour of extra time before they do it all over again in the quarter-final in Kansas City on Saturday.
