Croatia’s hopes of making it to a second successive World Cup final were dashed in Lusail by Lionel Messi and Argentina, who prevailed 3-0 in front of a 88,966 strong crowd. Here are our talking points from the fixture.
Paredes starts for Argentina; Croatia unchanged
Argentina reverted to a back four for this fixture with Man Utd defender Lisandro Martinez making way for Leandro Paredes. The other change- a forced one, saw Nicolas Tagliafico come in for the suspended Marcos Acuna. Croatia boss Zlatko Dalic chose to keep faith with the same XI that had upset favourites Brazil in the last eight.
Midway through the second half, with Argentina leading 2-0, coach Lionel Scaloni again chose to play with a back five, with Martinez coming in for Paredes to form a three man central defensive combination along with Cristian Romero and Nicolas Otamendi. The Albiceleste kept a clean sheet, which would’ve definitely pleased Scaloni.
Messi overtakes Batistuta
A slightly controversial moment saw Italian referee Daniele Orsato point to the spot after Croatia keeper Dominik Livakovic was adjudged to have fouled Julian Alvarez. Messi however made no mistake with his spot kick- a precise, powerful one into the roof of the net that gave Livakovic no chance to save it despite the latter guessing the right way.
With that goal, Messi went past the legendary Gabriel Batistuta to become Argentina’s all time WC record scorer. He also set up another for Julian Alvarez in the second half, embarrassing highly-rated young Croatian defender Josko Gvardiol in the process despite the 15 year gap between them.
The ITV curse playing a role again?
We all know about England and the ITV curse (they have only three WC wins in seventeen games since 1998 when on ITV), but it curiously seemed to play a role in Croatia’s exit here too! Their previous knockout games against Japan and Brazil were both on the BBC (which they won), but this one was on ITV, and they, like England, fluffed their lines badly.
While Argentina Croatia was on ITV, the other semi-final between France and Morocco, as seen on WherestheMatch, will be on the Beeb. The Atlas Lions’ knockout games against Spain and Portugal were both on ITV btw!
Croatia defending below par
They’re normally a very well organised team, but Croatia’s defending in this game left much to be desired. They messed up the offside line for the first goal, had two chances to clear the ball for the second and failed to do so, and Gvardiol was taken to the cleaners by an ageing Messi for the third. It was very uncharacteristic of an unit that was so well organised against Brazil and had needed a Neymar special to breach it.
Unfortunately, the first goal seemed to deflate Croatia, and they were never quite the same afterwards. There were a couple of half chances- both falling to Dejan Lovren, but Argentina were deserving winners at the end, and the South Americans will now be looking to atone for their 2014 final loss.
First WC game for Paulo Dybala
With the game done and dusted as a contest, Argentine coach Scaloni chose to give World Cup debuts to some of his lesser used players- Paulo Dybala got his first taste of WC action as a substitute for the impressive Alvarez, as did Villarreal defender Juan Foyth and Angel Correa. A happy squad wins tournaments, and Scaloni certainly seems to have kept that in mind!