Netherlands vs Argentina – World Cup 2022: Live score, team news, updates in quarter-final clash

With each game, you wondered if this would be the farewell. If the diminutive and expressionless Lionel Messi could take a team of official players one step further.

There is a terrible danger at the heart of everything, every time. The stadiums and the rest of the world want Messi’s mission to continue, although the Argentines who enthusiastically celebrated Brazil’s loss to Croatia at the stadium just hours before kick-off knew that could be their fate, too.

Just when it seemed he had single-handedly led the country to a semi-final last night, overcoming the monotony and ordinary to electrify the night, came a reminder of the brutality of the sport and its disregard for fairy tales.

Wout Weghorst, on loan to Besiktas from Burnley, where a £12m move didn’t work out last season, came from the bench to score two late goals, the last of which came 11 minutes into added time, and gave the Dutch a life saver

But when Virgil van Dijk stepped up and missed his first penalty, Messi stepped up to put Argentina ahead with a great shot. Stephen Berghuis missed for the Dutch and Argentina completed a 4-3 victory on penalties.

Some of the Dutch players formed a prayer group, which Weghorst is believed to have first joined last week, and after a game in which his team contributed very little, divine help was needed.

Messi charged with the responsibility of the equalizing goal by committing a foul on the edge of the area from which Steven Berghuis, in shooting form, launched a low pass that Weghorst rolled into a low shot.

The same two substitutes had initiated the rescue. Berghuis sent a ball over which Weghorst, the target man, headed home.

Louis van Gaal, who has borne the brunt of insults in the Netherlands for football that lacks the aesthetics the nation expects, found himself vindicated again last night when the game went into extra time.

“I don’t think there should be too much fuss about this,” Dutch manager Louis van Gaal said when asked how the team would deal with Messi. My players are professional enough.

That assumes that soccer is a game of cause and effect, lines on a page, instructions on a marker.

The individual in question transcends the application of logic to this sport, however, and that was made clear once again at the moment, 10 minutes before the time when Messi looked to one side, passed to the other and the orange sentries that even that time they had held the line. They were left fighting desperately to keep Nahuel Molina out.

His gaze was fixed to the left as he drove, balanced, towards the Dutch box, but somewhere in his peripheral vision was Atlético Madrid’s right-back. The ball was hit inside Daley Blind, who circled to try and salvage the situation.

Van Dijk withdrew to try to save the entry. A lost cause. When a team’s architect is on a different mental and visual trajectory, you’re just left with blind hope.

Van Gaal’s utilitarian approach had worked until then. The Argentina players brought all the excitement, tackling like their lives depended and occasionally stealing possession in the first half. But they were the street fighters. The Oranje were the uniformed guard and the vast ranks of 40,000 Argentines knew it.

The chances that presented themselves to Argentina early in the second half needed a sure touch that they were missing. When Mac Allister stepped up after a turnover, he flicked a pass to De Paul. The same thing happened when De Paul found spaces to place Messi. That ball also ran past him.

His resolution was to get the game himself. Around the hour mark, there was a turn past two players that caused a gasp in this spot. It was then that the ‘Messi’ song went up for the first time.

Then another of his runs across 15m of midfield grass brought him to the edge of the penalty area and forced Van Dijk to take emergency action.

One of the best defenders in the world just shoved the number 10 from behind. Messi took the free kick, arching it towards the roof of the net.

There was a time when his untouchability was not well received. When Nathan Ake cleared, Messi simply held out an arm to stop him, a deliberate act of hand that the Spanish referee somehow decided he didn’t deserve a booking.

The tragedy was that the Dutch were able to offer so little to what seemed like a decisive World Cup occasion. Blind was unable to offer width and although Denzel Dumfries on the opposite flank provided speed, van Gaal’s team were unable to put anything up against this old foe.

An indisputable penalty seemed to have sealed it: Acuña sliced ​​inside Dumfries on the left edge of the box and knocked his feet out from under him. Messi’s two steps to the penalty spot and clean kick seemed like a big step towards the semi-final.

The Dutch first goal was their first attempt all night. Extra time cemented the deadlock, but Argentina won the penalty shootout.

Messi stared at the sky in search of an explanation and knowing that this was football. That there was none.

RE-LIVE HOW ALL THE ACTION BELOW UNLEASHED WITH ADAM SHERGOLD