Lionel Messi produced a moment of trademark quality to score the opener in a 2-1 win over Australia and help send Argentina into the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup on Saturday.
Messi’s 789th goal in his 1,000th career appearance — but first in the knockout rounds of the World Cup — helped set up a last-eight clash with the unbeaten Netherlands on Friday.
Julian Alvarez scored Argentina’s other goal in the 57th minute after some calamitous Australian defending, before Enzo Fernandez’s 77th-minute deflected own-goal set up an unexpectedly nervy finale.
Photo: AFP
Argentina’s players celebrated wildly in front of their massed ranks of fans and man-of-the-match Messi paid tribute to them for dragging the team across the line.
“Amazing feelings and I am really happy to share these beautiful and happy moments with them all,” said the 35-year-old, who is trying to win the World Cup for the first time in what is likely his last attempt. “I know the effort they are making to be here with us, and I know how much they enjoyed it.”
“There is a bond we have — it is something beautiful, it is what the national team should be,” he added.
Messi’s classy first-half goal, bending the ball into the bottom corner, broke the resistance and ultimately the hearts of a gutsy Australian side who defied all expectations in Qatar and went down fighting.
Australia’s fans were vastly outnumbered among the packed crowd at the 45,000-capacity Ahmad bin Ali Stadium, and were drowned out by Argentina’s boisterous and bouncing supporters.
The Socceroos were huge underdogs, but this has been a World Cup of shocks.
Two-time champions Argentina were the victim of arguably the biggest in Qatar when they went down 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in their opening match.
Argentina had Australia pinned back, but coach Graham Arnold’s men were resolute and growing in confidence as an uninspiring first half wore on.
Argentina badly needed something special and in Messi they got it 10 minutes from the break.
Alexis Mac Allister fed defender Nicolas Otamendi, who was still in the box for an Argentina free-kick, and he accidentally sent it into the path of Messi who bent the ball left-footed along the ground into the corner.
Australia had only got this far once before, in 2006, and they needed to attack in the second half. Instead, they self-destructed.
Socceroos goalkeeper and captain Mathew Ryan tried to play out under fierce pressure in his box from hard-running Rodrigo de Paul just before the hour and was dispossessed by Alvarez. The Manchester City striker, 22, nipped in, stole the ball from Ryan and swiveled to slot into an empty net for his second goal in as many games.
The Socceroos looked dead and buried, but substitute Craig Goodwin latched onto a loose clearance and his shot hit Fernandez and ricocheted in with 13 minutes left.
Aziz Behich then went on a superb mazy run from left-back, beating three Argentina players before Lisandro Martinez made a vital last-ditch challenge. Both sides had chances in the last 10 minutes, the last falling to Australian teenager Garang Kuol deep in injury time, but goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez made a desperate save.
Arnold, who assembled a team full of hard work and defensive clout, said he was immensely proud of their surprise run to the last 16.
“I just told the boys I could not be more proud of the effort, and they gave everything to me and the nation,” Arnold said. “It’s all about making the nation proud and I’m pretty sure we did that.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier