Argentina Mounts Stunning Comeback in 3-2 Win Over Egypt

Reigning champs leave it very late again

After breezing through the group stage with little effort, Argentina has had their backs against the wall in each of their two knockout round games. They squeaked past Cape Verde in extra time and today against Egypt, came back from a 2-0 deficit to advance to the quarterfinals for the fifth time in the last six World Cups. They move to Kansas City where they will await the winner of Colombia and Switzerland.

Argentina dominated the game from start to finish, but for most of it, did not dominate where it counted: the scoreboard. They created the first chances of the game but fell behind out of nowhere as a long ball found the head of Yasser Ibrahim, who sent it past a helpless Dibu Martinez in the Argentina goal to give Egypt a shock lead after less than 15 minutes. Argentina recovered quickly though and put the Pharaohs under immense pressure. Goalkeeper Mostafa Shobeir had a fantastic game making a number of key, point-blank saves throughout the game. Argentina eventually got a penalty and Messi stepped up, ready to equalize. However, it was a poor kick and good save from Shobeir, leaving the Argentines still trailing 1-0 (and leaving Messi 0 for 2 on penalties at this tournament). The second half saw Argentina create more pressure and more chances, but it was the Egyptians who scored next. First, they had a fabulous end-to-end move that was scored and eventually called back after VAR spotted a very obvious foul at the start of the attack. Undeterred, the Egyptians came back down moments later on another devastating counterattack and put themselves up 2-0 anyway, with Mostafa Ziko bagging the goal. At that point, Argentina looked dead in the water, but they kept pushing and with their World Cup life on the line halved the deficit with eleven minutes to go on a goal by Cristian Romero that Shobeir got his hand to. Four minutes later, it was the magic man, Lionel Messi to score the equalizer on a blast from the edge of the penalty area (his eighth goal on this World Cup, having scored in every game). As the 4th official showed seven added minutes at the end of the 90 thoughts for everybody drifted towards extra time. Everybody, that is, except Argentina and Enzo Fernandez who scored the winner two minutes into the added time to give Argentina another Houdini-like escape.

After the game, Egyptian boss Hossam Hassan had himself a shocker of a press conference. Even as the Fernandez winner was hitting the back of the net, the Egyptians began to melt down in the most childish and ridiculous way possible. Despite not a single card being shown to the Egyptians during the first 89 minutes of the game, they could not (or perhaps would not) maintain their composure. Assistant coach Saafan El-Sagheer was sent off and shown a red card and then had to be tackled by two other Egyptian assistants after running onto the field at the referee and Argentina players. Three players and head coach Hassan were all cautioned shown yellow cards for Dissent in the chaos. After the final whistle, the Egyptians continued to shame themselves as forward Haissem Yousry was cautioned and shown a yellow card for Dissent as he chased the referee crew around the center circle. The Egyptian fans then joined in and began throwing bottles and other trash onto the field and the referee crew and Argentina players as they walked off the field. Why stadium security did not intervene at this point and remove the offenders remains unclear.

But Hassan’s postgame presser was a shocker. Fielding only two questions, from presumably sympathetic Egyptian media, Hassan said repeatedly that the referee was the main reason his team lost the game and made further ludicrous accusations that the referee crew was openly cheating to get Argentina as far in the tournament as possible. Then, bizarrely, he laid more blame at the foot of the tournament organizers for having the game kick off at noon ET, insisting that it should have been at 10pm because it wasn’t fair to his players to have to eat breakfast at 7:30 in the morning. The presser devolved further when the Egyptian media suggested to the coach that the referee had cheated them because of Hassan’s pro-Palestine comments earlier in the week, which Hassan did not dispute (though how or why that would be the case, neither the media nor the coach explained). But other than the goal being called back (which did not end up mattering because, again, Egypt went up 2-0 three minutes later anyway) Hassan could not and did not provide any concrete examples of where his team had been “cheated.” He said there was a jersey pull that wasn’t checked by VAR but did not indicate when or where it had occurred and did not explain how the Laws of the Game had been misapplied to screw his team. Then, before any of the Argentine or American media (including this writer) could ask him any questions, Hassan stated that in protest of the game’s referee, he would not watch any more of this World Cup and promptly walked off the stage and out of the room in a huff.

Argentina’s coach, Lionel Scaloni, pulled no such absurd behavior. Ever the professional, Scaloni stated what everyone watching the game saw: his team was better for most of the game and gave up two goals on single moments of brilliance by Egypt’s players. Scaloni further stated that games like this are why he became a coach after playing and also said he believes that games like this is why Messi is still playing at his age. Questions about the refereeing were not asked and it is not lost on this writer that it seems to only ever be coaches and players that lose games blaming the referee and never players and coaches that win games thanking the referee.