For 111 minutes it went nowhere. Then Julian Alvarez took two touches, 25 yards from goal, and settled the whole thing.
Argentina beat Switzerland 3-1 after extra time in their World Cup quarter-final on Saturday, and the goal that finally broke the tie belonged to the forward rather than the captain. In the 112th minute Alvarez struck from distance, the ball arcing into the top corner, and the reigning champions had one foot in the last four. ESPN called it "magic from Alvarez, not Messi". For once that read less like a headline reach and more like a plain account of what happened.
The night the understudy wrote the script
The story of this tournament was supposed to be Lionel Messi, and the long goodbye that everyone assumes is coming. He played his part here too. It was his delivery that Alexis Mac Allister met to head Argentina in front inside the opening ten minutes, a familiar sight, the captain conducting and a teammate finishing.
But Messi's own run of scoring in consecutive World Cup matches ended on Saturday, and Argentina found they needed someone else to drag them over the line. Switzerland saw to that. Just past the hour Dan Ndoye levelled, and a game that had looked comfortable suddenly was not. At 1-1 after 90 minutes, the champions were staring at a nervy half-hour and the very real prospect of penalties.
Switzerland's evening then took a turn. Breel Embolo was sent off for a second yellow, and the loss of a man shifted the balance of the tie in Argentina's favour. Even so, a numerical edge and a way through are not the same thing, and for a long stretch of extra time the Swiss defended their goal with everything they had.
Twenty-five yards, top corner
Which is where Alvarez came in. There was nothing on when he collected the ball, no obvious gap, only the sort of distance from goal that usually invites a safe pass sideways. Instead he shifted it and hit it, and the finish flew beyond the goalkeeper into the top corner. From 25 yards, in the 112th minute, with the game screaming for a moment of clarity, he supplied one.
Lautaro Martinez added the third deep in extra-time stoppage time, on 120+1, to turn a tight win into a tidy scoreline. That goal put the result beyond doubt. The one that decided the tie, though, was Alvarez's, and everyone inside the ground knew it.
It is the kind of strike that reframes a night. Argentina had been ordinary for long spells, second best at times against ten men, and yet they are through, because one of their forwards did something out of the ordinary when it counted. A great World Cup run often turns on exactly that: not the balance of play over 120 minutes, but a single player refusing to accept a stalemate.
The Messi question, and what comes next
None of this diminishes Messi. He assisted the opener, he remains the axis the whole side turns around, and his presence still bends games in Argentina's direction. But the champions cannot ask him to be the difference in every knockout tie, and on Saturday he was not. Alvarez was. On a night when the headline was there for the captain to take, the understudy took it instead.
That is the useful takeaway for Lionel Scaloni as the tournament narrows. Argentina do not have to be a one-man team, and against the sides still standing they cannot be. The semi-final is where that gets tested properly.
Next up is England, in Atlanta on 15 July, the last four of a World Cup the Argentines came in defending. It is a heavyweight tie by any measure, and it will demand more than the champions managed for large parts of Saturday. What they will take into it is a forward in the mood to decide matches on his own, and the quiet confidence that comes from finding a way through when the football would not.
For 111 minutes against Switzerland, Argentina could not break the deadlock. It took one swing of Alvarez's boot. England will have watched, and taken note.
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