If you were watching this game closely enough at home and paying close attention to the far side of the pitch, you may have noticed that there were two tracks of dirt etched into the ground close to the touchline that almost resembled a number 10. A bit like when an elderly person in your local newspaper finds the image of Christ in a burned piece of toast, if you happened to notice it, it was impossible not to read this as a sign. What, if anything, did this mean?
What it meant, actually, was that this was the same area of the pitch where Poland’s players had been doing shuttle runs during their warm-up. While pounding their studs into the ground, they had really marked out two zeros, only the outside of the first was hidden by the darker shade of grass. It was a sign, in a way, but only a sign that while you can squint and strain to see the poetry in life, reality is often far more prosaic.
Argentina will progress to the knockout stages after all. Lionel Messi will be there. The greatest player of his generation is three games away from a World Cup 2022 final. That might be his night, the night that he declares his genius and it is finally undisputed, but this night was not.
It instead belonged to the others helping him get there, the team that he carries and is occasionally carried by, and the generation that will attempt to succeed him when all this is over.
The breakthrough was not found by the best of all time but a 23-year-old playing for Brighton. The second was scored by a 22-year-old, set up by a 21-year-old, all three of them combining to save the blushes of a 35-year-old who had missed a penalty.
This was practically a home game for Lionel Scaloni’s side. The sky and royal blue-coloured seating of the 974 Stadium exaggerated that impression somewhat at first glance, but you did not need to stare too closely to know that Argentina’s typically large and loud travelling support made up the vast majority inside, especially when they started jumping. It was, from the first whistle, an atmosphere that can either push a team on to achieve anything or raise their anxiety levels to breaking point.
Messi initially thrived in it, eschewing the more minimal game that we are now used to seeing from him at international level. The idea that everything Argentina do flows through Messi persists but, in last year’s Copa America, he averaged 57 touches a game.
After two games of this group stage, he was averaging 56. That is around 20 or so fewer touches than he has generally had at Paris Saint-Germain this season, almost 30 fewer than he typically enjoyed during his final year at Barcelona.
By the tenth-minute mark, he had already had 12 touches of the ball. Of every player on the pitch, only Rodrigo de Paul had taken more. By the 11th, he had forced Wojciech Szczesny into a sprawling save at the near post. Messi does not always shoot so early in the game, rarely scores quickly either, instead using the opening stages as a sort of reconnaissance mission - strolling about, observing, searching for gaps that he can later exploit. There was little of that this time. The occasion demanded more.
And so, Messi started popping up in places you do not normally expect to see him - places like the far post, underneath a deep, hanging cross, lifting all of his 5ft 7in into the air in an attempt to connect.
He didn’t, but he did get a chunk of Szczesny’s glove in his face for his trouble.
It did not feel like a foul and was certainly not the type of incident that results in a penalty. The VAR disagreed. Here, from the spot, was Messi’s opportunity to put one foot in the last 16. Instead, Szczesny saved, Messi grimaced and the wait went on.
Attempt to translate Messi’s genius into raw statistical output and his penalty record is arguably the single most fascinating data point.
Whereas just about every other aspect of his game has touched the stratosphere, he is distinctly mediocre at 12 yards. He has a 78 per cent conversion rate from the spot for Argentina. That record is only slightly better at club level. Given that somewhere between three in four and four in five penalties are typically scored, he is just about average.
And on these nights, when he reverts to the mean, others must step up.
They did.
Messi was a bystander for the first, not touching the ball in the move which finished with Alexis Mac Allister’s side-footed finish at the start of the second half. He was a mere onlooker again as others in navy blue probed the edge of Poland’s box, Enzo Fernandez eventually changing pace and slipping the ball to Julian Alvarez, who finally fended off the threat of a group stage exit that has lived with Argentina since their opening game.
It still did not happen for Messi once Argentina were safely ahead, with him denied again by Szczesny shortly after Alvarez’s goal, as Poland fought to protect the two-goal deficit that has earned them a place in the last-16 through the backdoor.
This simply was not his night. But then perhaps that ‘10’ carved out in the mud was a sign after all: not of the number on the back of Messi’s shirt, but the number of team-mates that will at times have to play just as much a part if he is to fulfill his destiny.
