{"id":946507,"date":"2026-07-20T01:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T01:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/946507\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T01:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T01:53:14","slug":"even-donald-trump-couldnt-change-that-world-cup-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/946507\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Donald Trump couldn’t change that World Cup outcome."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was gravity. Maybe it was the soccer gods wanting to punish Lionel Messi in a substantial way, finally, for not paying his taxes<\/a> when he played for Barcelona. But in the first minute of the second period of extra time on Sunday, something bad finally happened to Argentina. More descriptively, a bad thing happened that Argentina could not inexplicably fart their way out of.<\/p>\n

Spain solidified itself as one of the game\u2019s great national teams, shutting out Argentina<\/a> as they had six of their other seven opponents in the World Cup. The suffocating nature of this one was historic. Argentina didn\u2019t get off a shot until extra time, later than any World Cup finalist since they started tracking these things in 1966. At no point did an Argentine shot reach Spanish keeper Unai Sim\u00f3n, whose work was limited to playing the ball, grabbing a cross or two, and calmly watching a Messi ball into the boxcross float onto the top of the goal in extra time. Those suffocating statistics are a testament to the team\u2019s brilliance, but the best one is just this: Messi, even looking a touch dilapidated at 39, was not able to come up with some absurdity in the nick of time to get Argentina off the hook. The Spanish killed world football\u2019s unkillable team.<\/p>\n

For some great number of soccer fans, Argentina evoked a feeling of a group that were getting away with something. It has become an article of faith for hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people that match officials favored Argentina to give Messi a golden sendoff. I\u2019m not persuaded, but then, it\u2019s not just fans who felt that way. Egypt\u2019s manager was among the competitors in the tournament who saw it the same way. And, look, it\u2019s true that the Argentines were frequent beneficiaries of borderline calls and overreaching tech. The fact that all of those calls were defensible and some of them were obvious, on replay, is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Messi\u2019s team offended my sensibilities in a different way. The Argentines were simply pulling a Houdini act in too many consecutive games, and dodging consequences at the last moment, for me to deem them an honorable football outfit. It happened again and again, with shocking consistency. Cape Verde, the beloved upstarts in their first World Cup, dragged them to deep water<\/a> and were closing in on a coin-flip penalty kicksshootout before conceding a cursed own goal in the 111th minute. Argentina then trailed Egypt 2-0 deep into the second half before scoring a ridiculous three goals in 15 minutes to escape. Egypt felt they\u2019d been wrongly denied a goal<\/a> on review and a penalty kick after an entanglement later. (My advice would be not to give up three goals in 15 minutes, but I do not begrudge coach Hossam Hassan his fury.)<\/p>\n

It just would not end, though. Their quarterfinal win over Switzerland was maddening. Argentina were the better side in the first half, but they were suffering against a Swiss onslaught and conceded a tying goal. The match then turned on a chaotic sequence in which a yellow card on Argentina became a second yellow on Switzerland\u2019s Breel Embolo. The call was correct, but typical of the world\u2019s exasperation with Argentina. Yes, the Swiss player had taken a dive, but, <\/a>goodness, <\/a>had VAR gotten annoying<\/a>. Argentina finally broke through, twice, in the second period of extra time. Surely, that would be the last time the team cheated death, and they\u2019d have to either play a quality 90 minutes the next time or be eliminated.<\/p>\n

Or not. Alternatively, Argentina could fail to get anything going for 60 minutes in a semifinal against England, fall behind 1-0, and then benefit from a confounding tactical decision: English manager Thomas Tuchel\u2019s choice to totally pack it in, park the bus, and (I guess) just pray that Messi and his friends would not break through at some point. Goals in the 85th minute and stoppage time sent Argentina through once again. Usually, describing a team\u2019s World Cup in such lengthy chronological terms would have a dulling effect, but it still feels surreal to see all of these results listed out in order.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Evan McGarvey
\n There\u2019s a Reason American Kids Aren\u2019t Better at Soccer. I Saw It for Myself All Too Well.
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Wow, oh wow, did it look like Argentina was about to pull off more of these shenanigans on Sunday. They were getting their heads bashed in throughout the match, unable to generate anything that resembled an attack. But Spain couldn\u2019t find the net, even as it controlled more or less all of the play. Even after the sendoff of Argentina\u2019s Enzo Fernandez in stoppage time, the 10-man Argentine dam wouldn\u2019t break. Keeper Emi Martinez set a men\u2019s World Cup final record with 11 saves. An apparent Spanish goal came back for a (legit) foul, reinforcing the perception of some kind of karmic force field around Messi\u2019s team. Even after Fernan Torres tallied for Spain in the opening seconds of the second extra period, there were glimmers of Argentine survival: Spain\u2019s Nico Williams getting too cute in the box and losing a ball out of bounds, a too-greedy Torres leaning offside by a shoulder\u2019s width to eliminate a second goal. Messi even threw a ball into the box in the waning seconds, off a set piece, that had every chance to find the goal.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    There\u2019s a Reason American Kids Aren\u2019t Better at Soccer. I Saw It for Myself All Too Well.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n <\/p>\n

    The Ending of Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey Changes the Meaning of the Whole Story
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Spain stood strong in a way that felt oddly relieving. It wasn\u2019t that Argentina was villainous but that I have drunk from a poison well of sports discourse the past few years. Long ago, there was a time when teams pulling off such high-wire acts were regarded as fun stories of human perseverance and team strategy. We now live in a different time, in which sports fans (me included) find it cheap and degrading when teams win games despite not having the best stuff. Hence a social media panic over \u201cethical hooping\u201d<\/a> in basketball, baseball fans finding deep comfort in screenshots of the league\u2019s Statcast analytics pages<\/a>, and me finding it morally offensive that Argentina kept getting away by the hair on their chins. The irony here is that \u201canalytics\u201d thought Argentina was playing well. By expected goals, they had clocked all of the foes they narrowly beat, including England. The offense the masses took at their success had to be more vibes-based, or because a Messi conspiracy thing was good fodder for casuals.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, I was taken in by this critique of the Argentines. Each narrow slithering away from trouble shifted my internal monologue to that of the great poet Jesse Pinkman, the Breaking Bad character who once sobbed of his meth-cooking antagonist Walter White, \u201cHE CAN\u2019T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS.\u201d<\/a> Eventually, Walter couldn\u2019t, but until five minutes into stoppage time of the second period of extra time of the World Cup final, you could have been forgiven thinking that Argentina could.<\/p>\n

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