ATLANTA — Start with 28-3. Add in a healthy dose of the Knicks’ 29-point NBA Finals Game 4 comeback, add a dash of Kick Six for flavor, and you’ll have something like Tuesday’s Argentina-Egypt match, a miracle of will, resilience and opportunity. Only the fact that La Albiceleste beat the Pharaohs in the World Cup’s round of 16, rather than the finals, keeps it from claiming the title of greatest comeback in sports history outright.
Down 0-2, with just 12 minutes of regular time left, the defending champions looked doomed. But Argentina has itself a Messi, and when you’ve got a Messi on your roster, you’re always in the fight.
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In the 79th minute, Messi curled in toward Egypt’s goal, then popped a chip right up for Cristian Romero to drive home. Just four minutes later, Messi threaded a laser through a thicket of limbs to equalize the match, setting up the inevitable winner in stoppage time. Expect anything different?
Messi doesn’t show much emotion in even the best moments, but on Tuesday, he wept openly on the pitch after the game, surely realizing how close he’d likely just come to the end of his World Cup career. His delirious teammates, meanwhile, decided it would be a good idea to toss him into the air:
“I told him on the pitch to enjoy it because he deserved it,” Lautaro Martinez said in Spanish after the match. “I told him we would keep giving everything, for ourselves, but above all for him, because this is his last World Cup and he has given us so much.”
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Meanwhile, beyond Atlanta Stadium, others were weighing in with their own takes, including someone who knows a thing or two about big comebacks involving Atlanta:
Well played, Tom.
When we take off our red, white and blue-tinted glasses, we’ve got to admit that there’s something a little precious about putting Brady — whose Super Bowl wins drew around 100 million viewers — on the level with Messi, who claimed the 2022 World Cup before an audience estimated at 15 times that amount. What we consider a good audience for, say, a World Series or NBA Finals game isn’t much more than a rounding error in the global World Cup audience.
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So when Messi pulls off something like he did Tuesday, with a measurable percentage of the entire planet watching, it hits a bit harder than an exclusively American comeback. Tens of millions of people in Argentina and Egypt combined will remember this day, and remember the short, stocky, slightly hunched little fellow who engineered the miracle.
“There really aren’t many words left to describe Leo,” Julian Alvarez said in Spanish after the match. “The World Cup he’s having is incredible; we try to help him, support him, and enjoy every moment alongside him. We’re also grateful for everything he does for us, and for the way he treats us. He’s a legend, the best player in the world, in history, so, yeah, that’s it.”
This is, in all likelihood, Messi’s final World Cup, which makes every moment like Tuesday all the more precious. He has, at most, four more games remaining. And for a good chunk of time on Tuesday, it looked like his World Cup time could be measured in minutes. Now, at least, he’s bought himself a few more days.
But how much more time does Messi have beyond Saturday’s match? That’s the key question hanging over La Albiceleste. Although Argentina comes in at second overall on FIFA’s rankings, none of the squads it’s beaten have ranked higher than 23rd overall. Egypt goalkeeper Mostafa Shoubir stood on his head to nearly beat Argentina, yes, but the squads still alive in this year’s tournament have entire rosters capable of playing at that level.
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Plus, Tuesday revealed an absolutely incandescent flaw in Messi’s game: penalty kicks. He’s missed two already this tournament, including one on Tuesday that would have equalized the match a whole lot earlier. He’s now just four-for-eight on PKs in his entire World Cup career, yet he’s still taking them for Argentina. Will that come back to bite Messi and the Argentine squad? It’s worth considering.
For now, though, we have at least one more match with Messi. One more chance to watch him lope around the pitch, walking at a scanning-the-grocery-aisles pace. One more opportunity to watch him lock in when the action picks up nearby. One more time to watch him bend the entire match, the entire sport to his will.
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