Pyramids to climb? Graves to open? The very last line written in the very last chapter?
And suddenly the tomb is empty.
Messi is alive.
It is not possible to do much more than this, it is not possible to hit more correctly in a match than Hossam Hassan’s red-clad football soldiers did.
Yet there they stand now, the Hassans, screaming in the face of the French referee.
Lost and over, after a game they had already won.
The national team has always been a way for the Egyptian regime to stick together a country that does not stick together, to pour water on the movements of the people’s layers.
They had contracted in express speed, they had gotten everything out of King Salah I, they had come in like thieves in the night and stolen every single crown jewel. Smash and grab. The job done, the world champions knocked and calculated.
And then this.
On the eve of a North African feat that had written new chapters in football history, everything fell apart, Argentina rose from the autopsy bench and walked away grinning.
Or crying, in the end. Tears streamed down Messi’s cheeks.
Lionel y Lionel, Messi and Scaloni, had both led their Mona-Lisa smiles as the final goals counted home. Celebrations aren’t their thing, this kind of football really isn’t either.
Not a match for Messi
How did it happen?
Well, we can take it from the beginning. Argentina wanted a quarter, but started by giving away a quarter. The start of the match was chaos and breakdown, De Paul and Paredes could not hit ten meter passes correctly. And Egypt was… better, more orderly.
When Yasser Ibrahim (a typical Hossam Hassan player, a quiet and loyal back-soldier) rose above a pinned Lisandro and headed in the lead after fourteen minutes, it was shocking but okay.
Messi missed his third penalty in his last six, and everything went wrong.
I am immensely fond of Scaloni’s management team, the architecture behind it.
Brutal backs Walter Samuel and Roberto Ayala are there, with their deep knowledge of the dark arts. Artist Pablo Aimar is there with his expertise in genius. The data analyst Matías Manna is the kind of ideologue who has slavishly dissected Guardiolismo since it didn’t even exist.
Everything they do is about giving Lionel Messi optimal conditions to play his heavenly lute.
And this was not a match for Messi.
He wants calm, structure, order. He got chaos. Paredes, his chief waiter, who could not fit. 0–1 in the neck. Irritation and stress.
System error
Argentina increased the pace of passing, played quickly instead of right, and found clear chances for Álvarez and Mac Allister. Egypt sank low – too low – in their 5-3-2, shoveled away and fought for their lives.
But they could counter, they could still send in a stab here and there. The first perfect counter-attack goal (orchestrated by Haissem Hassan and Mo Salah) by Ziko was ruled out, Was-correct but soul-dead, after a stamping half a year earlier. It’s the system that’s wrong, not the referees. The next perfect counter-attack goal (Hassan dribbled it forward too) by Ziko had to stand.
Egypt-Argentina 2-0, with twenty minutes left. With fifteen to go. Eleven.
Why did Argentina turn the game around in the end? How did they roll the stone away from the tomb opening?
One can talk – it will be done – about the politics behind a counter-attack goal being ruled out for a foul at the start of the attack. Couldn’t the powers that be lose Cristiano and Leo in the same day?
But of course it was just as much about psychology.
The blood rushes through the veins
Egypt were in a place they had never been close to before, a breath away from changing their footballing history.
Argentina? They stood in the middle of theirs. This, the trauma and the neurosis and the chaos and the anxiety, is their Heimat. They live for and from this, when the blood rushes through the veins and chaos is next door to Messi.
That Scaloni, the national team captain, breaks down afterwards and hollers out another tribute this group of playersthis group of players, is just as it should be.
The other day, when Argentina’s bags were searched by security, the whole world watched as Messi fumbled as they discovered a bunch of barbecue tongs in Cuti Romero’s bag. With ten minutes remaining, Messi hits a cross that Romero heads in. 2–1.
And the neurosis cannot be stopped. Messi plays Lautaro who misses, Paredes alone breaks the next fine Egyptian counterattack – but history has changed direction.
Four years ago, Gonzalo Montiel scored the penalty that made Argentina world champions. Now he serves Messi in the penalty area, and the number ten shoots the crossbar, exhales, makes the sign of the cross, points to the sky.
They are not wise
Diego Simeone and Kun Agüero in a wild dance in the stands. Muchaaaachos echoing in the Atlanta concrete. And of course there was only one way left after that.
Lautaro’s bent long cross from the right, Enzo Fernandez assassin-perfect waiting for the area. The attack, the skull, the target.
Better matches have been played in the World Cup, but not so many where the blood rushed from the Pampas to the pyramids and back again.
Half of Egypt’s leadership got shorted at the end, and I understand them. They wanted to protest against the judge, against the world order, against everything.
On the other side, Scaloni and Messi wept, to the chants of 60,000 Argentines.
They are not wise. But they are world champions, and they can be in two weeks, too.
