Leo Messi raises the flag of Argentina’s happiness as he has been doing for a thousand games, with a soft shot with the inside of his left boot whose inexorable destiny is the bottom corner of the opponent’s goal. And with this arched shot, in a perfect parabola, the Ahmad bin Ali stadium turned into La Bombonera, into El Monumental, like all those fields in Qatar through which the blue tide passes, and then conquers, for this World Cup which, for the moment, only in the passionate aspect, it is already more his than anyone else’s.
The victim was an Australia that had enough to get here and to sell its survival until, literally, the last moment of the execution. Before it was Mexico and Poland after the hook in the jaw given by Saudi Arabia in the opening of the tournament. “It was good for us”, they insist from the Argentine dressing room and the facts prove them right, the two-time champions immersed in a positive dynamic of continuous growth, which they will now have to put to the test against the Netherlands in the quarter-finals.
A thousand times, Messi has had to wait until his fifth World Cup to finally score in a match without a net, an abnormal gap that plasters his curriculum towards the great desire to equal Maradona with a World Cup between his hands Three victories remain on the horizon to achieve his last goal, with the advantage that now makes it more comfortable than ever.
Australia, no surprise on this subject, settled into a rigid defensive structure, trusting that the passage of minutes would increase their chances of scoring the big goal. The duel was in these, boring and cumbersome, when Messi came to break it. From a free-kick, he drew a wall with Mac Allister and after a light touch from Otamendi collected the ball again in the ’10’ to do what he has already done 787 times in his career.
The goal, after half an hour, gave oxygen to Argentina, who were freer from then on. Without allowing too much joy or frivolity, but managing the ball with greater lightness. This has been the case after every goal scored in the last three meetings, always a positive stimulus and never an element of relaxation, Scaloni’s players confident that the wind is blowing in their favor.
Regal de Ryan
The advance of the minutes reinforced this conviction. On the brink of game time, Ryan, the ‘Aussie’ goalkeeper, received friendly fire on his foot and didn’t know what to do with the ball. De Paul and Álvarez smelled blood, came to tackle him and in the end the City striker stole the ball from him to score in a goal abandoned to his luck. It looked all done, but a rebound goal from Australia added an unfair and unnecessary emotion that Argentina, not at all successful in the final minutes, could not avoid. The job was done.
