Nearly 70,000 people came to the Lusail Stadium on Tuesday expecting they could boast for the rest of their lives that they had witnessed Lionel Messi delivering a masterclass in his last World Cup. They ended up seeing something rarer and maybe more precious: a classic World Cup upset to rank alongside the United States beating England in 1950, North Korea beating Italy in 1966, and Cameroon beating Argentina in 1990.
Messi and his team-mates had the ball in Saudi Arabia’s net in the first half four times, but it was Hervé Renard’s fighters who prevailed, after reminding the world that when you run and run and run, football will always give you a chance.
Messi nearly scored with his first touch of the game, arriving late with uncanny anticipation on to a ball from the right, but Mohammed Al-Owais saved. A chance missed, but it looked like there would be a lot more where that came from. Sure enough, after 10 minutes the referee presented Messi with a soft penalty, as if in tribute, after Saud Abdulhamid was judged to have fouled Leandro Paredes as the players jostled for a corner. Messi stepped up and rolled the ball left, sending Al-Owais the wrong way.
You settled in to enjoy an exhibition from the great one, to savour his cunning, his vision, his touch, his economy of movement, his frictionless excellence, and so on.
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Saudi Arabia’s game plan, meanwhile, looked to have sprawled across the line that separates ambition from insanity. The back four was pushing up to a position just short of the centre circle, with 40 yards of empty space between them and their goal. What chance did they have of surviving against the passing and movement of Messi and the speed and finishing of Lautaro Martinez?
For the first half-hour or so, it appeared they had none at all. It was just too easy for Argentina to create chances with simple balls played through or over the top. On 22 minutes, Messi curved a run in behind to collect a pass by Papu Gomez and finish almost contemptuously past the retreating Al-Owais, only for the linesman’s flag to cancel the goal.
Six minutes later Argentina thought they had scored again. Rodrigo de Paul stabbed a ball through the middle of the defence, past the offside Messi, whose positioning seemed to confuse the defenders, and into the path of Lautaro, who seemed to have run from an onside position. VAR confirmed otherwise after the Inter Milan forward had already spent some time celebrating his chip over Al-Owais.
After 35 minutes, Argentina had the ball in the net a fourth time. Again it was Lautaro running through, with Messi alongside and no Saudi defenders to be seen, this time Lautaro went around the goalkeeper, but again he had run too early and the flag ended Argentinian celebrations.
Two questions began to form: one, should somebody explain offside to Lautaro, and two: are Renard’s tactics perhaps a bit cleverer than we were giving them credit for? When a defence gets a series of fractional offside decisions exactly right, maybe something more than dumb luck is at play.
For the 95 per cent of spectators who were fixated on Messi, it was easy to miss at first the gradual change in the pattern of the match. You know the Vicente del Bosque quote about Sergio Busquets: “Watch the game, you don’t see Busquets, watch Busquets and you see the whole game”? Watch Messi and you’ll see some amazing things, but you’ll miss a lot of the game because most of the time Messi is just watching the game.
And the game Messi was watching was turning into a scrap.
The point of playing a high line is to compress the space so you can get close to your opponents, make it hard for them to pass through, tackle and challenge and win second balls.
While the Saudis were not having much luck stopping the through balls, they were getting close enough to make 12 tackles and eight fouls in that first half. They were roared into every challenge by their fans, who throughout were far louder than what looked like a larger number in Argentina’s blue and white – though the Argentinian numbers were plainly boosted by many local Messi fans.
As the break approached it was clear who was playing with more energy. The question was: how were Saudi Arabia ever going to score? The relevant statistics at half-time were Argentina seven offsides, Saudi Arabia no attempts on goal.
In a surprise twist, the equalising Saudi goal started with Messi. Argentina’s captain lost the ball in the centre circle under pressure from two opponents, and the Saudi captain Salman Faraj played a quick ball forward to Feras Albrikan. He nudged it on to Saleh Al-Shehri, who saw space on the outside of Cristian Romero and decided to go for it.
The Spurs defender’s season has been disrupted by injury and his reaction was sluggish. Lionel Scaloni will have learned something in this moment: don’t play injured players at the World Cup, no matter how important they seem to be. Against opponents who are playing the game of their lives, they are always going to come up short. Al-Shehri’s shot bounced under Romero’s outstretched leg and past Emiliano Martinez into the far corner.
The huge Saudi crowd erupted and that noise had hardly abated when five minutes later, they scored again. A cross from the right was cleared weakly by Nicolas Otamendi, as far as Hatan Bahbri whose shot was headed into the air by Romero. The ball dropped to what looked like relative safety at the left corner of the box, where Salem Al-Dawsari was guarded by two Argentines. But then the little Saudi forward turned 180 degrees between the two markers, jinked right of Rodrigo, and cannoned a shot into the far top corner.
It was a moment of pure inspiration, celebrated with a somersault and backflip before he disappeared under the Saudi substitutes who had rushed on to the pitch in their joy.
What followed was one of those surreal halves of football where a lot seems to be going on yet nothing seems to happen. The Saudis, now playing a very low line indeed, committed 13 fouls and took six bookings as they fought to break up any developing Argentinian momentum.
The Argentines threw on Julian Alvarez and looked to their number 10 for hope. Ángel Di Maria flighted a ball on to Messi’s head but the effort was easily saved. Then Messi had another chance from a free-kick. In the warm-up he had put two in the top corner from a similar position, now when it counted it flew high and wide.
The match would last a total of 110 minutes, largely because Al-Owais ruthlessly obliterated one of his own defenders, Yasir Al-Shahrani, when coming for a cross, causing him a nasty head injury and a lengthy stoppage. Messi would have one more chance right at the end, but not wanting to hurry his shot, he tried instead to beat too many men and was crowded out. And that was it.
We had just seen the greatest moment in the football history of a kingdom that has the ambition to become the dominant force in the sport. While many are suspicious and fearful of what Saudi wealth will do to the club game, the victory at Lusail was made of the best of football. It was a perfect demonstration of how a weaker team can beat a stronger one through heart, determination, organisation, and just enough inspiration to finish the job.
For Argentina there was only humiliation. They have been here before, when they lost in 1990 against Cameroon, a result that was just as embarrassing at the time – and they recovered to reach the final that year. Now they will probably have to beat Mexico and Poland to reach the second round. It’s not over, but it’s going to be a lot less frictionless than anyone was expecting at half past one this afternoon.
