Fox of the Qatari desert – Sport – Kommersant

Croatia’s opponent in the first semi-final of the World Cup, which continues in Qatar, will be the team of Argentina, which defeated the Dutch in a spectacular quarter-final battle on penalties. The main hero of the match was 35-year-old Lionel Messi. In the first half, he made an amazing assist, after the break he impeccably converted a penalty kick, and at the decisive moment, he started a penalty shootout for his team with an accurate kick.

In the final stages of the world championships, the paths of the national teams of the Netherlands and Argentina intersect quite often. Their Qatari confrontation was already the sixth in a row, and of the five previous ones, the most famous, of course, was the 1978 World Cup final in Buenos Aires, where the hosts won 3-1 after extra time. Eight years ago in Brazil, Argentina prevailed in the semi-finals on penalties, and since then only two players have remained in the starting line-ups – Daley Blind and Lionel Messi. The Argentine leader, of course, immediately began to play a more prominent role on the field. But in the first thirty minutes, he was truly remembered only for a couple of sharpening passes and a shot from twenty meters, after which the ball flew above the gate of the not-so-star player of the Dutch – tall (203 cm) goalkeeper Andris Noppert, who made his debut in the national team at this World Cup .

It took a little more than half an hour to wait until the ingenious master showed himself for real. Having received the ball on the outskirts of someone else’s penalty area, Messi made four touches, and with the fifth, very subtly outwitting the cool defense of the Netherlands national team, sent the ball to his defender Nahuel Molina, who was ahead of Blind, who ended up in the position of the center forward and accurately shot into the far corner past Noppert.

It cannot be said that, having missed, the Dutch have sharply intensified. After all, even before the goal, they often owned the ball, but simply did not find options for aggravation. But Messi, who created more sharp moments before the break than the entire Dutch team, soon again disturbed someone else’s goalkeeper. At the end of the first half, the Argentines kicked a couple of times in the legs of her right-back Denzel Dumfries, who was struggling to provide maximum assistance to his forwards Steven Bergwijn and Memphis Depay, the game on both sides became nervous, and the main referee, Spaniard Antonio Mateu Laos, for several minutes had to show four yellow cards.

The break extinguished passions a little, but by and large did not change the course of the game. Holland tried to play ball control, Argentina counterattacked, and Messi tried to work miracles. His next pass, interrupted by Virgil van Dijk, led to a dangerous free kick. The Argentine captain took aim, tried to shoot into the far corner, but the ball flew a little over the crossbar.

By that time, the head coach of the Dutch, the wise 71-year-old Louis van Gaal, was already trying with might and main to change the situation. At the beginning of the second half, he released attacking midfielders Steven Berghuis and Thön Compeiners onto the field, then striker Luc de Jong. But at first it did not give much effect. Moreover, after Dumfries on the line of his own penalty inaccurately dealt with the left midfielder of the Argentines Mark Akunya, a 100% penalty was assigned to the Dutch goal. And Messi very calmly shot into the right corner, past Noppert, who remained in place.

The last trump card of Louis van Gaal in this game was Wout Weghorst, a 30-year-old striker of the Turkish Besiktas, who scored five goals in 18 previous matches for his national team. The statistics, of course, are not very impressive, but generalizing figures in football do not decide the outcome of a particular episode.

Ten minutes after Messi seemed to have already decided the outcome of this match, Berghuis found Verghorst in someone else’s penalty area with a canopy, to whom the Argentine defenders did not pay the necessary attention, and he closed the gap in the score with an exquisite header. The Dutch national team was hopeful. And the degree of emotions was getting higher, and when Leandro Paredes drove his foot into the defender of rivals Nathan Ake, the Dutch substitutes almost committed lynching over him.

On the first of ten minutes of added time added by Mateu Laos, the Dutch were entitled to a dangerous free kick. Berghuis loaded the ball into the head of one of the opponents from the wall, but the Netherlands national team had another exactly the same free kick in stock – already in the last minute, appointed after Verghorst was taken into the box. Compeiners approached the ball this time, and then it turned out that there was a football player on the field who, in terms of cunning, was able to give odds to Messi himself, this fox of the Qatari desert. To the surprise of the Argentines, in this case, it was not a blow that followed, but an unexpected pass from the bottom to the same Verghorst. And he did not blunder, breaking through not too hard, but exactly where it was required.

In extra time, the Argentines attacked more. Messi continued to terrorize the Dutch defense, Lautaro Martinez from a killer position almost hit the ball in the chest of Virgil van Dijk, and Enzo Fernandez hit the post in the last seconds of this battle. It seemed that the football god had already turned his back on the Argentina national team, but in the penalty shootout the Dutch did not work out from the very beginning. Master of penalties, Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez parried the first two Dutch shots – Virgil van Dijk and Steven Burhuis. And although the fourth Argentine strike from Enzo Fernandez was also unsuccessful, after a couple of minutes, Lautaro Martinez still put a winning point. Thus, the first semi-final of the World Cup was not destined to become purely European. December 13 against Croatia will play Argentina.

Evgeny Fedyakov