SI:AM | Fearless Argentina Completes Yet Another Comeback to Reach World Cup Final

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I really hope all the wildfire smoke blanketing the northeast clears out before the World Cup final on Sunday.

In today’s SI:AM:
🇦🇷 Argentina pulls it out again
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Don’t blame Tuchel
🐐 Fairytale finish for Messi

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Another World Cup classic

Holy crap, they did it again.

Argentina, which had already engineered three come-from-behind victories in the knockout stage of this World Cup, pulled off yet another heartstopping win against England in the semifinal yesterday to reach its second straight World Cup final.

It was an intense start to the game, with a first half full of post-whistle scrums that looked more like a hockey game, but the tone shifted after Anthony Gordon broke the deadlock with a goal in the 55th minute. Suddenly, the English team that had been pressing aggressively in the early stages seemed content to sit back and let Argentina dictate possession. England defended well for a while, but Argentina was finally able to break through with an equalizing goal in the 85th minute and scored the winner in the second minute of stoppage time.

Much of the conversation after the game has focused on England manager Thomas Tuchel and his decision to sub off attacking-minded players in favor of extra defenders as the second half wore on. Argentina came back because England ceded possession and granted Argentina opportunity after opportunity. In the 37 minutes between Gordon’s opening goal and Lautaro Martínez’s winner, Argentina had 88% of the possession. A breakthrough was inevitable with the field tilted so dramatically in one direction.

But as Grey Whitebloom points out, Tuchel doesn’t deserve as much of the blame as he’s been getting. The German manager’s first substitution came in the 72nd minute, when he took off Gordon (an attacking midfielder) and replaced him with Ezri Konsa (a defender). But the move was less about the manager trying to change the tactics and more about trying to match the personnel with the style of play the team had adopted. In the 17 minutes between Gordon’s goal and the first sub, England had just 17% possession. The players on the field had already decided they wanted to sit back and defend their lead. Tuchel was just making an adjustment to give his team the best chance of succeeding with the approach his players had chosen. Tuchel is an easy target, but the English players deserve plenty of blame for getting timid when the game was far from over.

Tuchel made two more subs 10 minutes after Gordon came off, bringing on Nico O’Reilly (a fullback) and Dan Burn (a hulking 6'7" center back). If the Konsa sub was England parking the bus, the later moves were them sticking chocks behind the wheels. But then Argentina found the keys under the floor mat and moved the bus out of the way.

Lionel Messi celebrates as dejected England players look on — England could only sit back and watch as Argentina dominated the latter stages of the game. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Enzo Fernández scored first on a rocket of a shot from outside the box that was assisted by Lionel Messi. The pass from Messi was fairly routine, but it was Harry Kane’s decision to abandon Fernández defensively and double-team Messi that made the goal possible. That’s the impact Messi can have on a game. Opposing defenses can choose to try to shut him down, but at the risk of creating opportunities for his supporting cast.

The second goal was pure Messi brilliance. After a shot by Argentina’s Alexis Mac Allister clanged off the post, Messi collected the ball and fired a perfect cross to the far post, where Martínez powerfully headed it home. The assist is even more impressive when you consider that it came off Messi’s right foot, not his preferred left.

It won’t be any consolation for England, but they at least have some company in the club of teams that have been on the wrong end of Argentina comebacks. The defending champs have been outscored 5–2 in the first 75 minutes of their four knockout stage games but hold a 9–1 advantage from that point onward (including the two games that went to extra time).

Argentina hasn’t been perfect in this World Cup, but it wasn’t when it won in 2022, either. People forget that Argentina opened that tournament by losing to Saudi Arabia and then was on the wrong side of a heroic comeback in the quarterfinals when the Netherlands scored two late goals to force extra time before Argentina won on penalties.

But unlike England, Argentina plays with a fearlessness that means no game is over until the final whistle blows. Part of that comes from having Messi, who, even at 39, is capable of turning a game on its head. More significantly, having a player like Messi—a legend of the game revered by his teammates—inspires hope in the rest of the team. Now, thanks to him, they’re one win away from an extraordinarily rare World Cup repeat.

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The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. The guy who got sent off for a red card three seconds into a match. Javier Armas of Fort Wayne FC in the third-tier USL League One kicked an opponent in the torso right after the opening kickoff.
4. An outrageous pass by Joseph Melto and a perfect volley finish by Greg Hurst for New Mexico United’s third goal against Lexington Sporting Club. (That’s the USL Championship, the level above USL League One.)
3. Rose Lavelle’s ridiculously precise shot for Gotham FC’s lone goal against the Washington Spirit. (The game was played at Citi Field in front of 42,000 fans, the largest ever crowd for a women’s sporting event in New York City.)
2. Enzo Fernández’s powerful strike for Argentina’s first goal.
1. Telemundo announcer Andrés Cantor’s call of Lautaro Martínez’s winner. (Cantor was born in Argentina and always does his best work when calling his native country’s games.)

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