Fans fought before the 2026 World Cup qualifying match between Argentina and Brazil

One of the main football matches this fall turned into a complete emergency. The confrontation between the national teams of Brazil and Argentina as part of the qualifying tournament for the 2026 World Cup opened with a massacre at the legendary Maracana stadium, which involved fans and police and which almost disrupted the match. It continued with a game full of toughness and even cruelty, which resulted in the hosts losing 0:1: after which their tournament position became completely alarming. And the story ended with an unexpected confession from Argentine head coach Lionel Scaloni, who made it clear that he intended to leave his post.

Lionel Messi, who in his long career has seen everything and, it seemed, could no longer be amazed by anything, at the end of this evening in Rio de Janeiro looked like a man who had just experienced a shock. And he said that he was truly scared – if not for himself and for his partners, then at least for their wives and children who were in the stands of the Maracana.

He was referring to what happened before the match between the two giants in the sixth round of the South American qualification. Riots broke out during the singing of the anthems. The lion’s share of the arena, the one that supported the Brazilians, reacted to the Argentinean with a whistle. The sector where fans of the Argentina national team were located took revenge for the disrespect by attacking some of the offenders, who, oddly enough, were quite easy to reach: in fact, no barriers were erected between the two camps, although just a couple of weeks ago there were mass fights here , at the Maracana, also arose before the final of the Club Libertadores Cup between the Brazilian Fluminense and the Argentine Boca Juniors.

Everything was developing rapidly. Police armed with batons rushed into the Argentine sector. It only got worse. The television cameras captured terrible images – blood, faces distorted in horror, including children’s, a crush near the fence, people jumping out onto the field so as not to die in it, a stretcher for one of the seriously injured…

On the field, Lionel Messi, along with other Argentine football players, approached the podium where the massacre was unfolding and tried to calm down the participants. And the goalkeeper of the Argentina national team, Emiliano Martinez, seeing, of course, that the intervention of the police was only complicating everything, only adding cruelty, tried to snatch the baton from someone. And Brazilian captain Marquinhos joined Messi in also pleading with fans to cool down. But they didn’t cool down.

Then Lionel Messi, following the protocol of the International Football Federation (FIFA), led his team to the dressing room. And after some time, the stadium became silent, and the match began half an hour late, only to turn, in a sense, into a continuation of the unpleasant prelude.

The strangest statistic associated with him is the number of cards shown by judge Piero Masa. There were only four of them, all to the Brazilians: three yellows and a red to Joelinton for hitting Rodrigo de Paul in the face. In reality, at times it seemed like the Maracana was being played by rugby players who had forgotten to learn the intricacies of football rules. The rudeness in this meeting was overwhelming, and at least a third of the more than four dozen fouls committed by the opponents were of the category when, in theory, the hand itself should reach for the card.

Another interesting nuance is that the Brazilians, who suffered simply colossal losses, who were forced to cope without the injured Neymar, Casemiru, Vinicius, Richarlison, and during the match also lost Marquinhos, did not look so bad. They were much closer to victory than the world champions, and, for example, Gabriel Martinelli will probably long remember how he hit almost point-blank, but ran into Martinez. And the Argentina national team had the only shot on target in the entire match – Nicolas Otamendi’s header after a cross from Giovani Lo Celso. And for the first time in history, the Brazilians lost a World Cup qualifying match that was played on their field.

What makes this misfire doubly painful is the fact that it extended the sad streak of the Brazilian national team, a streak that was previously unimaginable. Even within the October window, she managed to make peace with the Venezuelans, and then lost to the Uruguayans. And before the match with the most important opponent, already within the November window, the Brazilians were defeated by the Colombians.

Their tournament position after the third loss in a row cannot be called catastrophic for only one reason. The 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, will feature 48 teams instead of 32. And the expansion of the championship format has also increased the South American quota. Six out of ten teams will qualify directly for the championship, and the seventh will have a chance to qualify through intercontinental play-offs. The Brazilians are now just sixth. And the distance between them and the Paraguayans and Chileans in seventh and eighth places is tiny – two points.

But it turned out that even after the final whistle something extraordinary could happen that evening. He ended his speech at a press conference by Argentina national team coach Lionel Scaloni. A 45-year-old coach in the prime of his life, whose team won the World Cup gold last year and is leading in the current qualifications, a coach who seems to be adored by both fans and players, suddenly announced that he plans to leave his post. Scaloni explained that the Argentines “need a coach who has all the energy and feels good”, that he “needs to think because the bar is set too high and it is difficult to continue.” He, however, emphasized that he would still discuss everything with the leadership of the country’s football federation and with the players themselves, but it sounded as if Scaloni had already made a decision.

Alexey Dospehov