The master plan is clear to anyone with eyes. FIFA rigged the World Cup draw so Argentina would become the first team to make the semis without playing a side ranked in the top 15. FIFA has rigged every match in favor of Argentina. FIFA demanded that the VAR take away Egypt's second goal over a much-delayed foul call. In that same match, FIFA instructed the referees to not call a foul by Argentina's Julián Alvarez on Mohammed Salah. FIFA even put an all-Argentine referee crew on the France-Morocco match.
And, during Saturday night's quarter-final against Switzerland, FIFA pulled out the big guns, rigging the game in Argentina's favor by forcing Breel Embolo to commit the single stupidest dive I've ever seen.
OK, if you're still with me, obviously that's all dumb. Argentina's path to the semis has been more straightforward than expected, to be sure, but that was in large part due to Uruguay and Colombia crapping the bed. Egypt's second goal was the result of a foul to start the attacking play, and Egypt scored a second soon after anyway. The foul on Salah was clearly not a penalty. As for the Argentine crew, that's so conspiracy-brained that I don't even have a real rebuttal besides disbelief at that level of reach.
That leaves Saturday's turning-point as the only remaining question there shouldn't be about rigging or favoritism. But that one is best asked with plain exacerbation: What was Embolo doing? What could possibly have been going through his mind—just moments after Switzerland equalized through Dan Ndoye, after Alexis Mac Allister had opened the scoring in the first half—that caused Embolo to try to embellish a foul at midfield, right by the sideline, in order to draw a yellow card on Leandro Paredes? In real time, it worked. But then everybody's best friend, the VAR, reared its divisive head once again.
On replay, Embolo's play-acting became extremely obvious. So for the second time this tournament, a yellow card on a defender was rescinded while the attacking player got a card himself. (The first happened to Miguel Almirón in the United States-Paraguay match; between that and the first "covered mouth" red card, the Paraguayan had quite a trailblazing tournament.)
As much as I hate VAR, and as much as FIFA needs to find a better name for this type of review other than "mistaken identity," with the rules in place as they are, this was as clear a call as can be. Embolo threw himself down, perhaps in frustration at Argentina's lack of a yellow card up to that point, and to his credit, it worked on the ref down on the field. However, Embolo should have known from the Almirón situation that diving to draw a yellow card can be reviewed in this World Cup. It was a stupid way to get a yellow card, made only stupider by one more bit of context.
That context—and what will surely make this another point in the supposedly ever-mounting pile of evidence that FIFA is rigging the World Cup for Lionel Messi and Argentina—is that Embolo was already on a yellow card at the time. By the rules of the game, he had to receive a second yellow for his dive, because simulation equals yellow card, and it has for years. I don't love VAR, as I've made clear on this very website, but it's here and the players have to adapt to its existence. By diving in a position where there was little to gain and a whole lot of everything to lose, Embolo might have cost his then-ascendant team a real shot at making the semis.
And what a shot it would have been. Switzerland didn't just score five minutes before Embolo took a tournament-altering dive; it was growing into the game and dominating the run of play. Argentina looked, as it has at many times during the knockouts, fresh out of ideas. With Messi playing perhaps his worst game of the tournament, this was a golden opportunity for Switzerland.
Speaking of Messi ... yeah, he was not good on Saturday. Really, aside from the astonishing eight goals, he has been off all tournament. His dribbles don't have quite the same bite they used to, his probing passes have found opponents as frequently, if not more frequently, than his intended targets. Even his shooting, which has been deadly when Argentina needed it, failed on Saturday; I can't remember the last time I've seen Messi hit the wall on a free kick from what is solidly in his range. Switzerland constantly had defenders tracking Messi around the box, oftentimes doubling or tripling him before he could even receive the ball. The game plan was simple: Make someone else on Argentina win the game.
For a long time, no one seemed up to the task. Argentina is very good at melodically lulling opponents into mistakes with tight space passing and dribbling, but on Saturday, that rhythm felt harmless. Even up a man for about 50 minutes, Argentina just could not break a stout Swiss phalanx. When the Argentines did find some semblance of space, Swiss keeper Gregor Kobel was up to the task.
Kobel was immense on Saturday, as he has been all tournament long; he will leave with his head held high, probably the best goalkeeper of the tournament to date. It was going to take something magical for Argentina to avoid the coin flip of a shootout, and even with a man disadvantage, Switzerland seemed sturdy enough to push it to spot kicks.
Here's the thing about this underwhelming Argentina side, though. Even with a supposedly "easy" path to the semis that has left no one impressed with the team's performance, Argentina still has enough talent to win the World Cup. Though the consistency and execution hasn't been there, there are plenty of match winners on this team.
Against Cape Verde, it was center back Lisandro Martínez, who popped up with a crucial goal. Against Egypt, Lautaro Martínez and Enzo Fernández combined on a cross for the winner. Though Messi has felt like a team unto himself, he isn't truly alone. On Saturday, it was Julián Alvarez's turn: In the 112th minute, with penalties looming ever closer, the Atlético Madrid striker received the ball just outside the box, looked up, saw no plays materializing, and decided that he would just do it himself. And do it, he did:
That's the type of goal that Argentina is always a threat to score; the only surprising thing is that it wasn't Messi who did it. (To Messi's credit, he almost scored a similar goal earlier in the match, but his weak-footed curler just missed the goal.) Alvarez is one of the best strikers in the world on his day, and though he has been dealing with an ankle injury since before the World Cup, he's just as dangerous as anyone in the world from pretty much any point of the attacking third. It took every bit of that danger to finally beat Kobel straight up. Even with the picture-perfect strike from Alvarez, the goalie almost got to it.
Those are the margins that Argentina has been working with in the knockout round. There's been no dominance here, and Argentina will certainly feel lucky that Embolo lost his head and leaped into the abyss for no real discernible reason. Even though Lautaro Martínez scored a third as Switzerland finally broke its shell to push for an equalizer, making the scoreline a more respectable 3-1 at the end, this was the toughest test so far for an Argentinian side that has had nothing but tests since the knockouts began.
On a different day, with a different Swiss player diving, perhaps one not already on a yellow card, this might have been where the quest for back-to-back World Cup titles ended. It didn't, though, and you can blame FIFA, or dark magic, or just Argentine luck. But at the end of the day, thanks to Alvarez's strike, Argentina is moving on to its second consecutive semi-final, two victories away from lifting the World Cup again. Call it rigged, but I'm not sure anyone on Argentina or in its fanbase has felt that any of this has come too easy for the Albiceleste.
