Lionel Messi crowned his 1,000th career appearance with a typical piece of World Cup magic.
Argentina superstar Messi, who has won 169 caps, scored his 789th goal for club and country to set up a quarter-final showdown with the Netherlands. It was the Messi show as the crowd chanted his name, willing him to write another chapter in his football fairytale which has established him as one of the all time greats.
Whether this Argentina team is good enough to help carry him to glory remains to be seen but they have arguably the most magical player on the planet.
You have to cherish these moments of Messi magic because even the Peter Pan of football cannot go on forever. At 35, this is surely his last shot at winning the World Cup, although he never seems to grow old and you never tire of watching him.
Messi’s scampering runs, his bursts of genius and incredible ability make him the star of the show every time he plays. But, incredibly, despite the remarkable stats this was his first ever goal in the knock-out stages of a World Cup.
Messi is one of only six players to appear at five different World Cups and his place among football’s all time greats is not in doubt. But Messi would dearly love to end his career as a World Cup winner and he does lift what looks like quite an average Argentina team to different heights.
It would be unthinkable for Argentina to be able to win it without him and they came to the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium decked out in blue and white to worship one of football’s greats. The small pocket of Australian fans - dressed in their yellow shirts - at one end probably watched through their fingers whenever Messi got the ball.
In fairness to Australia, they did brilliantly of starving Messi of service for the first half an hour. Their hard-working band of players became national heroes even by reaching the last 16. This looked a step too far for a squad whose most recognisable player is probably the bald headed Aaron Mooy as the Celtic midfielder buzzed around trying to get close to Messi whenever the Argentina No10 dropped deeper.
Messi had to come deep to try and get on the ball in a very flat, rather dull opening with little action or quality. But it came alive after Dundee United’s Aziz Behich left a foot in on Messi over on the touchline and that immediately wound up the Argentina captain. Within two minutes, Argentina were ahead and there is probably a lesson there for Australia.
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Papu Gomez - in for the injured Angel Di Maria - played a rather loose pass. Messi plucked it out of the sky, controlled it in an instant and looked up for his options. Messi played it to Brighton ’s Alexis Mac Allister, whose pass found Nicolas Otamendi and his quick lay-off played it into the path of genius.
Messi darted onto the ball, looked up and just placed an inch perfect shot into the bottom corner to bring the whole stadium to its feet after 35 minutes. We were in the presence of greatness.
Argentina hardly had to extend themselves and the game was effectively over as a contest when they got a second after 57 minutes courtesy of some appalling Australian defending. Kye Rowles’ back pass put Mat Ryan under pressure, Argentina’s Rhodes De Paul closed down the Aussie keeper and there was Manchester City ’s Julian Alvarez to nip in and score in true poacher’s fashion.
Australia hauled themselves back into the contest after 77 minutes and proceeded to give Argentina a major scare just when the game looked to be drifting away. Craig Goodwin’s 20 yard shot took a wicked deflection off Enzo Fernandez, wrong footed Argentina keeper Emiliano Martinez and flew into the far corner.
Australia then nearly pulled off a miracle when Behich, the 31-year-old Dundee United left back, raced forward, beat three players and was only stopped by a last ditch goal-saving tackle by Manchester United defender Lisandro Martinez.
They were hanging on at the end as Australia staged a late rally - Martinez saving from Karang Kuol - but it would have been unthinkable for Argentina to throw it away and deny Messi his chance of glory.
