The thought was always there, but it was only after advancing to the quarterfinals—once the Argentine national team had once again overcome the anxiety of an early World Cup exit—that head coach Lionel Scaloni publicly admitted that both he and his staff had doubted the squad’s chances of progressing in the tournament.
As the tournament approached in June, many players arrived with minor injuries that did not appear to have quick fixes. Facundo Medina filled in at left back while the team’s starter, Nicolás Tagliafico, missed the entire group stage while recovering from a calf injury. Cristian Romero first dealt with a knee ligament injury and was later sent off while playing for Tottenham, receiving a six-match suspension that kept him out of the team’s relegation battle. Lisandro Martínez, Argentina’s other starting central defender, spent much of this past season recovering from an ACL tear. He returned, shut down Erling Haaland in a Manchester derby, and then got injured again. In June, Emiliano “Dibu” Martínez admitted that he had dislocated a finger before playing the Europa League final with Aston Villa. (“I looked like I was missing an arm,” he joked weeks later.) He still played in goal. Leandro Paredes, for his part, strained his hamstring during his final match for Boca Juniors in the Copa Libertadores against Universidad Católica of Chile.
For the first time since Argentina won the 2021 Copa América in Brazil—a victory that gave Scaloni much-needed credibility—the Argentine media shielded him from scrutiny regarding the selection of the final 26-man squad. With so many of the 2022 World Cup champions nursing injuries, and others failing to perform at a high level for their clubs—Nahuel Molina, Thiago Almada, and Nicolás González at Atlético Madrid; Gonzalo Montiel at River Plate—it was difficult to predict what the coach would do when the time came to make the big decision.
“That was the worst moment of all,” Scaloni recently admitted. “The rest of the coaching staff and I had a really rough time.” I was reminded of my first interview with the coach after the Qatar World Cup, at the January 2023 Ballon d’Or gala in Paris. In 1982 and 1990—when the Argentine national team headed to the World Cup as defending champions—their coaches, César Luis Menotti and Carlos Bilardo, respectively, had stuck with the players who had helped them achieve glory, and the team fared poorly in terms of both performance and style of play. I asked Scaloni: would he follow in their footsteps? His answer was emphatic: “With me, they’ll play whether they’re 17 or 35. Whoever is in the best form will play. I won’t be beholden to anyone.”
That isn’t quite what happened. Scaloni opted for a very limited squad renewal. Two-thirds of the current roster consists of the 2022 champions, while two other players—Giovani Lo Celso and Nicolás González—who had narrowly missed the Qatar tournament due to injuries were also called up, out of what seemed to be a moral obligation.
The outcome of the group stage was, in a way, expected: facing opponents that posed no significant obstacles in Algeria and Austria, we discovered that Lionel Messi was still in flying form. This was already evident in his final three MLS matches with Inter Miami, thanks in part to a special individual training regimen he undertook alongside his teammate Rodrigo de Paul. With his brilliance—and a modest performance from the rest of the squad—Argentina secured all six points with ease and advanced to the Round of 32.
The third and final group match, against Jordan, therefore seemed ripe for a rout: a weak opponent, nothing at stake, and a chance to take a look at the players who had been in the background, without a leading role. However, for the coaching staff, that performance marked a turning point: despite a 3-1 victory, it was Jordan that scored the only goal in open play. Discretely, Scaloni decided to drop a large number of the players who started that match, effectively removing them from his plans almost entirely.
Thus, with Tagliafico’s return, the squad was effectively reduced to no more than 17 players. It was clear that the team would struggle to hold up against tougher opponents—compounded by the heat and constant travel—and that was when a different kind of World Cup began.
The Argentine team began to find a heroic spirit in the face of every adversity: Cape Verde managed to equalize twice, yet a third Argentine goal arrived to secure a spot in the Round of 16. Against Egypt, facing a seemingly insurmountable 2-0 deficit, Scaloni’s men turned it around to win 3-2 in just 17 minutes.
A striking feature in both games was a bone-deep refusal to accept elimination, stellar shifts by a 39-year-old Messi in the waning minutes, and the goals scored by defenders Romero (against Cape Verde) and Lisandro Martínez (against Egypt), who had surged into the attack along with right-back Montiel; Montiel had even played the role of a center-forward during the build-up to Messi’s stunning equalizer against Egypt.
“Scaloni is going to kill me,” Romero admitted with a laugh after the Egypt match. “Going forward once was okay because we were down 2–0. But at 2–1, I didn’t like it, and at 2–2, I liked it even less,” the manager later remarked. Thus, a kind of emotional anarchy was born, with the entire team often pushing forward in the waning minutes of the match in an eat-or-be-eaten mentality. “They’re like warriors—in the best sense of the word,” Scaloni said.
It happened again in the quarterfinals against Switzerland, but the ultimate expression of this spirit came against England: it was as if they needed to concede a goal and feel pushed to the brink to unleash the adrenaline that drove them to go for the kill at every opportunity.
“We’ve worked so hard to be here and the lads have given every last bit of running, sweat, blood, tears,” acknowledged German manager Thomas Tuchel, England’s coach. “At this level, it’s not enough.” Rarely had England been so thoroughly overwhelmed as they were in the final thirty minutes of the semifinal in Atlanta.
Scaloni’s squad had reached another final, now fueled by this epic spirit—keeping the Argentine team alive while they balanced precariously on the edge—and driven by a star who has grown accustom to delivering exactly when his team need him most. Messi, the team’s beloved captain, has even allowed himself to let go during the tournament: crying, dancing, and singing the Argentine anthem at the top of his lungs, in stark contrast to the days when he wouldn’t so much as move his lips.
“He allowed himself to do what he couldn’t during an adolescence marked by emotional voids—in that Catalan setting,” observed Cristina Cubero, director of the Barcelona newspaper Mundo Deportivo and perhaps the journalist who knows the Argentine star best, having become a second mother to him when his own mother left for Rosario with two of his siblings, leaving him behind with only his father.
Once again, the emotional aspect outweighed the technical, even with a squad of highly valued players. In the closing stages of matches, this emotional anarchy has overwhelmed the game itself, even as Scaloni has kept his feelings in check and the team attempts to find a balance that has been nearly impossible to maintain. That is how the Argentine national team has reached yet another final.