The dream for Lionel Messi and Argentina, for now at least, lives on. Lionel Scaloni’s side will have to play an awful lot better than this if Messi is to win the World Cup at his fifth attempt. But the most important thing against Mexico on Saturday was simply to win, to get this World Cup campaign up and running and to claim three points that mean victory over Poland in four days will secure progress to the last 16.
It was, of course, Messi who turned the game, a 2–0 triumph at the stadium that will host the World Cup final three weeks from Sunday. Who else could it have been? Who else will it ever be? It’s always about Messi. There is something elegiac about watching him now, knowing that every match could be his last at a World Cup. He is 35, his body beginning to fail him. He will surely not be at the World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada in four years. Every game is played with a sword hanging over him. Had Argentina lost here, had it been eliminated, would he even have turned out against Poland? Rumors persist about his calf strain.
And this could easily have been a draw, if not outright defeat, and after losing to Saudi Arabia, that latter scenario would have put Argentina out after just two games. For the first half, Argentina was wretched—and it was fortunate Mexico was not much better. That Scaloni had made five changes from the opening game, albeit a couple of them forced by injury, suggested just how rattled he was, which, after a run of 36 games unbeaten, seemed remarkable. All the talk of stability and balance that dominated the optimistic build-up to the tournament gone in one slightly freakish four-minute spell against the Saudis.
