Croatia. Runners-up from 2018. I didn’t think they had the best world cup this year. But they did reach the semi-final. It’s a one-off game. With Modric having all to play for, it would be a challenging game for Argentina.
But there was the one guy who was on a mission. Messi magic turned everything. He had another man-of-the-match performance. From the beginning of the game, you could see it in the performance of the Argentine players. They were there to win. For the majority of them, it was to win it for Messi.
I wasn’t surprised at how the Croatian team performed. They didn’t look like a great unit. They didn’t look like the team from 2018. While Argentina had great flow in their game, Croatia looked very slow and sluggish. They had a hard time building anything.
The beautiful moment came in the 69th minute. Messi already had a goal from the penalty. Argentina was 2-0 up. But that didn’t stop Messi from producing a beautiful piece of play. He dribbled past one of the best defenders of the tournament to set up the third goal. It was a moment of magic that set the stage for the final.