More joyless carping about footballers showing emotion then, is it? Fresh from Brazilians dancing it’s now Argentinians celebrating.
In fairness, it was more than just celebrating. There was plenty of aggro in it but surely the first time you saw the photo (the one at the top of this article) you didn’t think, ‘Oh that’s out of order’ but, ‘Oh I wonder what the story is there’?
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There’s always a backstory, although that’s not really the point here.
The first part of that backstory is that it was obvious the Netherlands players had done something to provoke Argentina. You don’t celebrate a penalty shootout victory by rubbing the opponents’ noses in it without reason.
It can be seen from the overhead cameras that the Dutch players were approaching Argentina’s penalty takers on their way to the spot. And that’s fine too!
This isn’t an absolution of the Argentina players and demonisation of the Dutch. It’s a celebration of all of it.
The Argentina players did it as well. Emiliano Martinez, the goalkeeper, waited at the penalty spot for Steven Berghuis, held the ball out for his opponent to grab, then tossed it to the side (before then saving the spot-kick). Hilariously petty.
Steven Berghuis took the Netherlands’ second penalty (Photo: Julian Finney/Getty Images)This kind of stuff is part of the game and, more than that, it’s part of what makes the World Cup special.
And even if teams act like that without provocation, isn’t that part of the fun, too? A lot of people don’t like Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid and their ‘dark arts’ — just listen to the British commentators for a Champions League game — and they don’t need any provocation, but it’s all part of the rich tapestry of football.
What’s the alternative? No bad guys? No trouble? How boring would that be? In fact, you need bad guys.
Was Leandro Paredes out of order to nail Nathan Ake with a foul and then boot the ball at the Dutch bench? Yes, absolutely, but it was great fun. He got his comeuppance when Virgil van Dijk bounced him to the ground. Nobody was hurt, yellow cards all around and on we go.
Even the referee, Mateu Lahoz, who irritated nearly everybody with his determination to book everyone — apart from Lionel Messi for an obvious handball, strangely — was part of the entertainment.
We would genuinely all love World Cups, Champions Leagues and everything else to be full of thrilling, end-to-end games where both sides give total disregard to closing spaces between their lines and try to score as many goals as possible, but that’s not how football is now, and it’s certainly not how it is in these seismic matches.
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And that brings us to the second point. When have you ever seen Messi saying anything controversial after a match, cupping his ears at an opposition manager even? It doesn’t happen. So why did it happen on Saturday?
Pressure. And pressure does strange things to people.
This is his last World Cup and the pressure on his shoulders is incredible. The pressure on the rest of his team-mates is incredible too, for what it means to them and for what it means to him. The emotional investment in this tournament at home in Argentina cannot be overstated.
The 40,000 Argentine fans who have stolen the show off the pitch in Qatar will have given you some idea of that purely from watching it on TV. So you can imagine the scenes at the Obelisco in Buenos Aires or the Monumento in Rosario.
Fans in Lionel Messi’s home city of Rosario flocked to the Monumento to celebrate Argentina’s win (Photo: Sam Lee)Messi has been living that for more than a decade and the whole Messi-Diego Maradona debate is going to be decided by whether he wins the World Cup or not. He has been at the top of the game for 12 years, with barely a bad run of form, but it will be this World Cup that has the biggest say in how he is remembered. And had that penalty shootout gone differently, it would have been over.
No wonder he was the only player to run to the goalkeeper, ‘Dibu’ Martinez, as the rest of them headed for Lautaro Martinez. Dibu kept his World Cup alive. His legacy, in a way.
Lionel Messi was the only Argentina player who went to celebrate with shootout hero Emi Martinez 👊#BBCWorldCup #BBCFootball pic.twitter.com/62dZIhTo97
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) December 9, 2022
In fact, Messi was one of the few Argentina players not to get involved in the baiting of the Dutch when Lautaro converted the winning penalty, but he was certainly part of the aftermath.
They’re already selling phone cases and T-shirts with ‘que miras, bobo?’ on them in South America, the words Messi said to Wout Weghorst in the middle of a post-match interview — ‘What are you looking at, dummy?’ It could be dummy, it could be dopey, it could be idiot. You get the idea.
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Dibu didn’t hold back either. “I heard (Netherlands manager) Louis van Gaal saying, ‘We’ve got an advantage in penalties. If we go to penalties, we win.’ I think he needs to keep his mouth shut.” He told him that in person, too.
This was Nicolas Otamendi's reaction after Argentina's penalty win…
Right in front of the Netherlands team 😳#BBCFootball #BBCWorldCup pic.twitter.com/hGssVC5WSN
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) December 9, 2022
This part of the story is harder to understand. It all stems from the fact the Argentina players had felt slighted by Van Gaal’s comments in the build-up, but nothing really stood out as controversial outside the camp.
The Argentinian media, who will talk about absolutely anything regarding their national team at this World Cup given all the air time afforded to it, ran Van Gaal’s quotes about Messi not working off the ball and the Netherlands’ penalty advantage but they didn’t go overboard on it. It wasn’t a big controversy by any means.
Clearly, it was a different story inside the Argentina camp. In hindsight it might be easy to see why Dibu would be annoyed, given he has a reputation for saving penalties — as he showed on the night — but it was fairly innocuous stuff on the whole, certainly not enough to provoke that kind of reaction.
So maybe Argentina weren’t right to take those sentiments into the game. Maybe the Dutch players weren’t right to provoke the Argentinians, maybe the Brazilian players were disrespectful in their dancing.
Maybe the opposite is true in every case… but that’s not really the point. It’s part of the game, it’s part of the fun. Enjoy it.
(Top photo: Elsa/Getty Images)
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