World Cup: Argentina Survives the Netherlands’ Comeback to Keep Messi’s World Cup Alive (Published 2022) (2024)

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Rory Smith

A two-goal lead disappears, so Argentina has to do it the hard way.

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LUSAIL, Qatar — Argentina almost did it the easy way. For a while, Lionel Messi and his teammates were coasting. They had a two-goal lead against the Netherlands, and just a few minutes to see out. They were comfortable. And then, all of a sudden, they were not. They got there in the end, of course, but it would not be Argentina if there was not a little suffering.

It had all seemed like such smooth sailing. Argentina had won even as its battalions of fans, decked out in sky blue and white, were still filling the steep, banked stands of the Lusail Stadium: A few miles away, Brazil had been eliminated by Croatia, Argentina’s fiercest rival and the most intimidating obstacle on its route to the final vanquished in one fell swoop.

Barely a couple of hours later, the second victory seemed secure. Messi had created Argentina’s first goal, threading a pass of delicate brilliance into the path of Nahuel Molina, and scored its second, converting a penalty after Marcos Acuña had been tripped by Denzel Dumfries.

As Messi stood in front of Argentina’s fans, his arms outstretched in front of him, as if waiting for their gratitude for the gift he had bestowed upon them, many in the crowd would have allowed their thoughts to wander to next week, to the meeting with Croatia, or even a little further still, to what they have come to refer to as “la tercera,” the country’s third World Cup.

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The prospect felt, in that moment, less of a fever dream than ever. Argentina’s campaign in Qatar started with one of the most searing humiliations in the country’s sporting history: beaten, here at Lusail, by a Saudi Arabia team that had barely been granted a second thought in the weeks leading to the tournament.

That loss, with its echoes of Argentina’s defeat to Cameroon in 1990, shredded the team’s delicate confidence. The nation indulged in a bout of soul-searching and teeth-gnashing. The players held tense, emotionally charged meetings. Lionel Scaloni, the coach, took a team that had not lost a game for almost three years and ripped it up to start again from scratch. These are not, as a rule, reliable indicators of forthcoming success.

And yet, since then, Argentina has painstakingly played its way back to equilibrium. Each game has been a little less fraught than the last; the emotionality — that sense that everything was now or never, that the pressure of delivering Messi the World Cup that he craves was overwhelming — has ebbed away.

Against Mexico, Argentina was full of angst until the 86th minute. Against Poland, it had settled things after only a little more than an hour. It cruised against Australia until a late, fortuitous goal forced Scaloni’s team to grit its teeth and hold its nerve. The Netherlands, in theory, presented a far more exacting challenge; the reality, in those first 75 minutes or so, was quite the opposite. It was not easy, not at all, but it was smooth.

Not for long. Louis van Gaal, the Dutch coach, has spent much of the last year or so locked in a philosophical battle with elements of his homeland’s news media. They would prefer him to play a more traditional Dutch style: fluid, adventurous, aesthetically pleasing. He is adamant that the modern game is about absorbing pressure, setting traps, seeking a sucker punch.

On Friday, he chose option C: throwing on two enormous strikers and firing balls at their heads until something happened.

With seven minutes to play, one of them, Wout Weghorst slipped his marker and diverted Steven Berghuis’s cross past goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, halving the deficit. Argentina clenched its fists and tried to hold on.

It survived until almost 11 minutes of injury time had elapsed, the final few seconds of a distended period of added time, when it was caught out by the ingenuity — and courage — of the Dutch midfielder Teun Koopmeiners, who chose the last minute of a World Cup quarterfinal to produce the sort of imaginative brilliance that Messi would be proud to call his own.

Presented with a free kick only a few inches outside the Argentine penalty area, Koopmeiners, rather than shoot, slipped a low pass into Weghorst’s feet. The striker swiveled and shot in one fluid motion. Argentina’s players slumped to the floor, their certainty shredded, the score tied. They were going to have to do this the hard way.

The hardest, in fact. Extra time came and went, the mood of the game descending from fractious into downright furious. Leandro Paredes sparked a mass confrontation with the Dutch substitutes and was fortunate not to be sent off. The players scrapped and clawed at each other. What chances there were fell to Argentina. Enzo Fernández shot wide. Lautaro Martínez hit the post. Fortune did not seem to be smiling on them. Penalties loomed.

Once again, it all seemed to be going so well. Emiliano Martínez, Argentina’s goalkeeper, is a specialist on these sorts of occasions. He saved the first two Dutch efforts. In the stands, the fans roared, their fear converted into a vaguely primal sound. But that would have been the easy way, and Argentina does not take the easy way.

Enzo Fernández missed. Suddenly, the Argentines could feel the breath of the Dutch on their necks. Emiliano Martínez could not find another save. And so it came down to Lautaro Martínez, the forward dropped after two games because of his erratic finishing. He stepped up, and he scored. The stadium shook with the noise.

A few minutes later, Argentina’s players were standing in almost exactly the same spot as Messi had an hour or so earlier. They had their arms slung around each other’s shoulders as they bounced on their heels in celebration. Messi has enjoyed those moments of communion with the public during this tournament, conducting the choir, singing along.

This time, though, he slipped quietly away. As he made his way toward the tunnel, he looked up at the heavens, as if in prayer, thankful that Argentina had made it through its ordeal, relieved to have got there, even if it had taken the long way around.

Dec. 9, 2022, 4:56 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

For Argentina, Lautaro Martinez ... scores! Argentina advances, 4-3 on penalties!

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:55 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

For the Netherlands, Luuk De Jong ... scores!

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:54 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

For Argentina, Enzo Fernandez ... misses! Argentina leads, 3-2, after four kicks.

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:54 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

For the Netherlands, Weghorst ... scores.

Dec. 9, 2022, 4:52 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

For Argentina, Montiel ... scores. Argentina leads, 3-1, after three kicks. Argentina is a kick away from advancing.

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:51 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

Koopmeiners ... scores.

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:51 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

Paredes ... scores! Argentina leads, 2-0, after two kicks.

Dec. 9, 2022, 4:50 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

Berghuis ... is saved! Two straight diving stops for Martinez!

Dec. 9, 2022, 4:49 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

Messi ... scores! Argentina leads, 1-0 after one kick.

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Dec. 9, 2022, 4:48 p.m. ET

The Netherlands now has to take some risks.

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Just a hint of fractiousness drifted into the game in the final few minutes of the first half, thanks to a couple of fairly blatant fouls and the full and frank exchanges of views that followed. The Dutch, in particular, have every reason to be frustrated: Argentina has held Louis van Gaal’s team at bay with a degree of comfort for the first 45 minutes. Its task from here on in is straightforward: if it can keep the Dutch at arms’ length for another 45 minutes or so, then it has a semifinal against Croatia to relish.

For Louis van Gaal, the Netherlands’ canny coach, it is more complex. His team has to take more risks; no coach in this tournament can match his tactical acumen, but by his own admission he has adopted a more defensive approach in the final few years of his career. That won’t do any more. The Dutch need to score, ideally twice, and they have to do it without allowing the world’s best player any space at all. It’s a task that is probably best described as “tricky”.

Dec. 9, 2022, 1:42 p.m. ET

Victor Mather

Lineups: No surprises for either side.

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Argentina and the Netherlands mostly stick with the teams that brought them here. And yes, that means Lionel Messi is on the field … let’s just say it once more: maybe for the last time at a World Cup!

Argentina looks like this:
Emiliano Martinez; Cristian Romero, Nicolas Otamendi, Lisandro Martinez; Nahuel Molina, Rodrigo de Paul, Enzo Fernandez, Alexis MacAllister, Marcos Acuña; Lionel Messi, Julian Álvarez

And the Netherlands:

Andries Noppert; Jurrien Timber, Virgil van Dijk, Nathan Ake; Denzel Dumfries, Marten de Roon, Frenkie de Jong, Daley Blind; Memphis Depay; Cody Gakpo, Steven Bergwijn

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Dec. 9, 2022, 1:12 p.m. ET

Ben Shpigel

Argentina vs. Netherlands: This one has some rich history.

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Argentina vs. Netherlands

How to watch: 2 p.m. Eastern. Fox, Telemundo.

So, an Argentina-Netherlands quarterfinal, you say? The last time we were blessed with one of those in a World Cup, in 1998, Dennis Bergkamp merely scored a goal that bent space and time and turned fans of both sides into puddles. Even though the teams have played each other twice more at the World Cup since, Bergkamp’s late winner remains the last goal scored.

Two scoreless ties, with one — in the 2014 semifinals — decided on penalty kicks, which Argentina won.

This is all to say that this particular rivalry teems with history, stirs a lot of nostalgic emotion, and that we are careering toward another wildly entertaining match of consequence. The invigorated Albiceleste are far more imposing than when the tournament began, as are the Dutch, who against the United States flaunted some of the creative buildup play they had been lacking.

Lionel Messi. Virgil van Dijk. Enzo Fernández. Cody Gakpo. Julián Álvarez. Memphis Depay.

Onward, and upward, to Argentina-Netherlands in the World Cup, Part 6.

Dec. 9, 2022, 1:12 p.m. ET

Rory Smith

Louis van Gaal, the Netherlands coach, is having the time of his life.

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Louis van Gaal, the veteran coach of the Netherlands, has long been regarded as one of soccer’s most fearsome straight shooters: unapologetically blunt, consistently withering, wholly self-possessed. Van Gaal does not suffer fools, and when van Gaal looks around, he believes he sees quite a lot of them.

It was somewhat disconcerting then, a couple of weeks ago, to hear him use a news conference to discuss — at reasonable length — the genetic benefits of his mother’s “cherry-red cheeks,” which she retained, apparently, well into her old age. (The context of this is not, even weeks later, entirely clear.)

Still, perhaps the 71-year-old van Gaal was just in an unusually good mood, feeling a little playful in the early days of the World Cup. He has, after all, made it clear that he is in Qatar for the eminently serious business of trying to become a world champion; there is, he has said repeatedly, very little point to entering competitions if you are not going to try to win them. For van Gaal, this is business, not pleasure.

And yet, on Thursday afternoon, there he was again, sitting on a raised dais next to one of his players — Memphis Depay, transformed into his manager’s foil — cracking jokes, offering asides, apparently having the time of his life. There was a gag about how good he looks for his age (this has been a leitmotif); one about his old sparring partner, Dick Advocaat, still working despite being “even older than me”; and one bit that ended with him offering to kiss Depay “on the mouth.” Van Gaal, hard as it is to believe, is having fun.

That is not to say he has lost any of the old fire, of course. He has been locked in a cold war with some sections of the Dutch news media for some time. On Thursday, he met their inquiries with an icy glare and an acerbic put-down that, generally, tended toward an instruction to ask better questions. When he wanted to be, though, he was wry, and teasing, and just a little silly.

The trite explanation for this, of course, would be that van Gaal has obtained a new perspective on life over the past couple of years. He was found to have prostate cancer in December 2020, and after he came out of retirement to lead the Dutch national team — something he did only “for the country,” as he put it — he was taking training sessions during the day and undergoing radiation therapy at night. After such an ordeal, it is probably hard to take soccer quite so seriously.

But listening to van Gaal, that seems unlikely. He takes his work no less seriously than he did when he was at Ajax and Barcelona and Manchester United. His conflict with the Dutch journalists who cover his team is rooted, essentially, in his conviction that the country’s traditionally adventurous style is out of step with the modern game; he sees himself, despite his age, as trying to drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He is locked in what he sees as an ideological struggle, one that he feels matters.

More compelling, then, is his own explanation. His personality has “not changed all that much,” van Gaal said, except in one regard: “I have more patience now than I used to have,” he said. “And patience is a wonderful thing.”

This will, in all likelihood, be van Gaal’s last job, even though he has had a great time at this World Cup telling reporters that they should “never say never,” barely a beat after insisting he will never work again. And he would, by and large, be forgiven for having the air of a man in a rush, desperate to accomplish the few things that have eluded him before time is called.

As it is, van Gaal has gone the other way. He has been notably relaxed during the tournament, not just in his interactions with journalists, but with his players, too. He does not have long left in the job to which he has devoted his life. He seems determined to enjoy whatever time remains.