Argentina vs. Nigeria: World Cup 2018 Live
Argentina must beat Nigeria or Lionel Messi’s 2018 World Cup is over. The Nigerians won’t roll over because they have advancement dreams of their own.
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| Home | Game Info | Away |
|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | Argentina | |
| Group Stage | ||
How to watch: In the U.S., Fox and Telemundo have the broadcast at 2 p.m. Eastern, but you can stream it here.
Argentina vs. Nigeria Top Story Lines
• The overarching story line today points its laser focus on one man: Argentina’s Lionel Messi. The player who single-handedly dragged an underperforming team to the World Cup with a hat trick against Ecuador on the final day of qualifying now will be tasked with lugging them into the knockouts here. But Messi has not played well in Russia, feeding deeply set narratives that he is somehow a lesser player for his country than he has been for his club, Barcelona. Those are probably unfair.
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Continue reading the main story• Barcelona is a far more balanced team than this defense-challenged, tactically disjointed Argentina. But he missed a penalty kick that might have beaten Iceland in the opener, and he was ineffective against Croatia. So if he goes out here, it’s possible Messi might be playing his last game for Argentina in a World Cup.
Continue reading the main story• Sunday was Messi’s 31st birthday. Let’s just assume he didn’t spend it smiling and laughing.
• Argentina’s players — well, at least one of them, Javier Mascherano — pushed back on reports that there was a mutiny inside the team against Coach Jorge Sampaoli.
“The relationship with the coach is totally normal,” Mascherano said at a news conference in Moscow. “Obviously, when we feel some discomfort or we see something, we express it to him because otherwise, we would be hypocrites.”But Mascherano also said it was up to the players to fix what was wrong, not just the coach. “Whether we like it or not, we are the World Cup runners-up and at some point we have to prove it,” he said. “I think it is done by giving our best, giving everything we can to the team and, mainly, saying what we think.”
Graphic
World Cup 2018: How Teams Can Advance to the Round of 16
The group stage of the World Cup is almost over. What will it take for each team to advance to the knockout round?
OPEN Graphic • The advancing scenarios for Nigeria and Argentina are not complicated, but both need a win as a starting point. Via our excellent ‘How Every Team Can Advance’ graphic:
Nigeria advances with a win over Argentina. If it draws, Iceland could catch it with a big enough victory, say two or three goals for Iceland (the exact number depends on how many goals are scored in the Nigeria draw).
Argentina must defeat Nigeria. Even then, it could be knocked out if Iceland beats Croatia by the same margin or better.
• There’s been quite a bit of grumbling and blame-assigning for Argentina’s poor performances here, but Nigeria’s win over Iceland threw the team a lifeline, and Argentines have grabbed it. On Monday, a group of fans even lured one of the players, the backup goalkeeper Nahuel Guzmán, to take over one of their drums while they sang.
Love this #ARG players join sing along with fans camped outside their hotel before defining game v #NGA - chap with the drum is reserve keeper Nahuel Guzmán https://t.co/6IWVUE2QUp
— tariq panja (@tariqpanja) June 26, 2018
• Nigeria’s goalkeeper, Francis Uzoho, is only 19 years old. A former forward, he was deemed “too slow” and fashioned into a goalkeeper around the time he joined the Qatari-financed Aspire program at age 14. (The Times wrote about Aspire, a monumental effort to assess millions of young talents in Africa and other places and bring them to Qatar for training, in 2014.) Uzoho impressed while in the program, drawing the attention of Spain’s Deportivo La Coruña after he excelled at a tournament in Barcelona in 2017. They snatched him up as soon as he turned 18.
Interactive Feature
Spot the Ball
We’ve pulled some photos from group stage games and made one very important change — we removed the ball. See if you can guess where it was.
OPEN Interactive Feature Some Pregame Reading
• Rory Smith did an excellent breakdown of what’s wrong with Argentina the other day. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s all Messi’s fault. The problems go much, much deeper.
• Do you covet one of those fancy Nigerian jerseys? Rory and the NYT’s fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, had a great chat about them before the tournament.
Continue reading the main storyOriginal ArticleSports
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