Lionel Messi uncovered his face after the final whistle and the tears were already coming. Minutes earlier, he had missed a penalty and watched Argentina fall 2-0 behind Egypt in a round of 16 match that seemed to be slipping away. By the end, Argentina had turned it around and won 3-2.
The crowd in Atlanta saw the swing that changed everything. Mostafa Shobeir saved Messi’s early penalty, Egypt kept defending resolutely and counter-attacking incisively, and Argentina looked rattled for long spells. Then Messi found another level when the game demanded it. On 79 minutes, he crossed for Cristian Romero to head home. Four minutes later, Messi met the next chance first time and drove it in off the bar. Enzo Fernandez then finished the counter-attack that completed the comeback.
The numbers made the turnaround harder to dismiss. Argentina were 2-0 down after Messi’s second penalty miss of the tournament, and the match had begun to look like a night in which the holders would be pushed out early. Instead, the same player who had looked dazed for part of the second half ended up shaping the result twice, first by creating Romero’s goal and then by scoring himself. That is why the tears after the whistle did not look like celebration. They looked like release.
Messi said he felt a lot of anger after the miss and admitted he felt as if he had let the team down at an important moment. He also said fate had something special for him at the end, and he managed to score the equaliser. Thierry Henry, watching the reaction to the 39-year-old’s display, said: “You do not (want to) wake up the beast,” adding that when Messi’s eyes change, “he switches” and it becomes very difficult to stop him. Henry said he raises his game when his team needs him and starts to take the ball and dribble past almost everybody to change the match.
That is the unsettling part for anyone who faces him next. Messi can miss, disappear for a stretch and still end a knockout match as the player who turned it. Argentina are through after a comeback that looked impossible at 2-0, while Egypt are out after coming close to a first World Cup quarter-final. What remains unresolved is the same thing that has followed Messi through so many decisive nights: whether the next match will again ask him to pull Argentina back from the edge.
