Hello and welcome to another edition of OFFSIDE. This was a day to remember for all World Cup fans as Lionel Messi and Argentina came back from two goals down to entomb Mohamed Salah’s World Cup dreams. Meanwhile, the Swiss beat Colombia in a penalty shootout to set up a clash with Messi’s Argentina.There was an almost Biblical feel to the entire state of affairs. With 11 minutes left in normal time and two goals down, the World Cup dream appeared dead and buried for Messi and Co. Much like the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible, they were proverbially trapped: the Pharaoh’s men hounding them and elimination staring them in the face. In the Biblical version, Moses parts the Red Sea. In the footballing iteration, Messi again pulled off a miracle to dump the Pharaohs out of the World Cup.The difference between a good player and a great player is that in clutch situations, they raise their game. Thierry Henry, Messi’s former teammate from Barcelona, made the point during his broadcast on FOX: “You do not (want to) wake up the beast. You look at his eyes, and he switches… when his team needs him, he raises his game. He starts to take the ball and dribble past almost everybody to try to change the game.”And so he did, grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck, first assisting Cristian Romero’s equaliser with a cross before smashing one off the bottom of the bar to make it 2-2. At that moment, it almost felt inevitable that the proverbial sea would part, and it did deep in injury time as Enzo Fernandez finished off a remarkable counterattack.
After the match, Messi, like his rival Ronaldo, was in tears, though these were tears of joy and release rather than regret. Messi expressed anger at his own penalty miss and, frankly, given his Shaq-like penalty record, he really ought to hand over the duties to someone else.He said after the match: “I felt like I had let the team down at an important moment. But fortunately, fate had something special for me at the end…”Of course, like all things in this World Cup, the entire fracas has turned political.In his post-match conference, Egypt head coach Hossam Hassan said he would never watch the World Cup again because there was no justice in this competition, that there was no respect for fair play, pointing to the VAR-cancelled goal and the penalty that was denied. Turning philosophical, he pointed out that life was unfair but there ought to be fairness in sport, channelling the man who got a red card rescinded recently by stating he was not convinced by the outcome.Those of a more progressive persuasion are convinced that Argentina are being favoured by FIFA for various reasons. Some claim it is to promote “pro-Zionist” Messi. Others point to the lack of melanin diversity in the squad because apparently all countries have to cosplay as Disney movies now. Others point to Argentina’s red-carpet welcome for former Nazis. Some even claim that Egypt are being punished for being “pro-Palestine”. Of course, one could point out that “pro-Palestine” Egypt’s Rafah border with Palestine is heavily fortified to prevent any Palestinians from venturing in, much like keeper Mostafa Shobeir’s rock-solid performance in the first half.
Swiss fans cheer as they watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer round of 16 soccer match between Switzerland and Colombia at a public viewing in Zurich, Switzerland on Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (Claudio Thoma/Keystone via AP)
It is actually rather interesting how the world shoves crude political epithets on Messi’s shelf, including political outcomes across the globe, including India, where the state of West Bengal saw a political reversal over the hullabaloo of Messi’s disastrous visit. The causality is as real as the number of pirates globally being inversely proportional to global warming.Either way, in the real world, Messi faces the most neutral of political opponents in his next match, ones who did not even pick sides as wars tore the continent apart: Switzerland. While Argentina were busy turning the Book of Exodus into stoppage-time football, Switzerland and Colombia were playing a very different kind of knockout game: one for people who think football should occasionally be audited by chartered accountants. It ended 0-0 after 120 minutes, which is another way of saying both teams spent two hours doing everything except the one thing the sport is named after. Colombia, who had already sent Ghana home in the previous round, found themselves trapped in a Swiss vault where flair went to file paperwork and never returned.And then came penalties, where Switzerland did what Switzerland so often do: remain calm while everyone else discovers the emotional limits of the human nervous system. The Swiss won 4-3 in the shootout, Colombia’s World Cup dream evaporated from 12 yards, and the tournament got the quarter-final that geopolitical satirists had been quietly praying for: Argentina against Switzerland.
