World Cup column: Messi slays the giant to keep World Cup fairy-tale alive
Lionel Messi had seen everything the game of football has to offer long before his 1000th appearance in Argentina’s World Cup Last 16 meeting with Australia on Saturday. From winning titles and re-writing record books to battling against himself in goal of the season contests and embarrassing the best that the mortal world has to offer on a weekly basis. There are few mountains left for him to climb, little wonder remaining in the twinkling of the stars.
Although he has perhaps not seen many things like all 198 centimetres of Harry Souttar, the Australian defender with never ending limbs and an even longer stride. The Aberdeen-born centre-back is yet to appear in the Premier League, let alone be in a position where he would be on the radar of Messi. Although it is his height that makes him stand out, there is cold, hard, quantifiable justification as to why the giant came into the meeting with the world’s greatest vertically challenged virtuoso with people talking about him.
Souttar won all three of his aerial duels in a spirited opening half hour from Graham Arnold’s well-drilled unit at the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium, having lost just four in the entire tournament to that point. Australia made the game dull and uninteresting, dragging superior players down to their level through organisation and hard work alone. But the quality of Souttar still found ways to shine through.
The sense of fantasy surrounding the Stoke City defender is only increased by just how good he is with the ball at his feet. He began what was only his 14th cap breaking the lines of a semi-enthusiastic Argentine press with precise passes along the floor and nicely weighted balls lofted through the air. Messi was not only well-marshalled for most of the first half of his landmark game but was arguably being outshone by his unfamiliar adversary.
But no one in the history of this game has been as hard to deny for a prolonged period of time. Australia may have cleared his initial free-kick, they may have shepherded him into a position of little danger by forcing a backwards pass to Alexis Mac Allister, but once Messi made a horrific Nicolas Otamendi first touch look like a lay-off of Messi-like proportions in the penalty area everything that Australia had done in the opening 30 minutes, throughout their impressive group stage showing and in all that has happened in the 234 years since the nation of Australia was founded, mattered no more.
One touch to cushion the ball, to take it out of his feet and open up the entire goal in the way that practically only he can. A second to find the bottom corner of Mat Ryan’s net, placing the ball through the gaping limbs of Souttar to strike down the colossus and move a step closer to embracing his destiny.
The second half broke free of the protagonists bind, infused with the madness that seems to have infected the World Cup over the past week or so. Argentina wrapped up the win following a glaring Ryan error, only for a heavily deflected Criag Goodwin strike to give them hope they probably did not deserve. And from there, Argentina’s inherent anxiousness, a state of insecurity that has handicapped Messi before and may yet do so one final, gut-wrenching time, took hold.
Lautaro Martinez missed more than one game-clinching chance after excellent work from Messi – an all too familiar feeling for Argentina’s captain over the length and breadth of his international career. Only a desperate Lisandro Martinez challenge prevented Aziz Behich from equalising. Australia heaved Souttar into attack to see if he could get the better of 5ft 9 Manchester United defender in an aerial duel.
Emi Martinez, one of the few Argentina players who seems to embrace the challenge of rising to meet Messi’s expectations, made a last-minute save from Garang Kuol that saw a number of team-mates collapse on top of him in a mixture of celebration and relief.
In truth it was a largely terrible game in which very little of any real importance happened, but the fact Messi set Argentina on the way to victory, with what was his first goal in the knockout stages of a World Cup, means that it will only enhance his legend should he lift the trophy in two weeks’ time.
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