Lionel Messi guides Argentina to victory over Australia despite late scare

And yet, did you expect Australia to sit down and accept their fate? This Australia, with its SPFL stalwarts, its honest journeymen, its plethora of guys with surnames as first names? Australia took the hard road to Qatar and they took the hard road out of it, outgunned but never outrun, even burgling a late consolation goal and threatening an almighty shock.

For half an hour it looked as though Australia might just succeed in dragging Argentina down to their level. They may have been outnumbered in the stands, where the armies of Albiceleste wrapped a tight tourniquet of noise around the pitch and barely stopped squeezing. But on the pitch it was the gold shirts who initially looked busier, buzzier, more numerous. They covered more ground, won most of the second balls, counterattacked with decent numbers.

That was the cue for Lionel Scaloni to make a change. In the second half he brought on Lisandro Martínez and switched to a back three. Had he been burned by the defeat to Saudi Arabia? Either way, it gave Argentina a width and verticality that suited them, with Australia beginning to push forward. They were playing with more energy now, more brio and swagger. Messi made a couple of brisk runs that evoked his electrifying peak. And so as Matt Ryan, of FC Copenhagen, received a routine back pass, Rodrigo de Paul sprinted towards him, murderously closing down his angles.