Messi missed the penalty. Then scored twice. Argentina are through
Before the match, the giant screen at Dallas Stadium showed all 16 of Lionel Messi’s previous World Cup goals one by one. The crowd cheered each one. By the time the last appeared, the stadium was already his. Two more followed. They always do. In the ninth minute, Messi walked up to a penalty spot and missed. Not by much. He tried to curl it against the post. Schlager dived, guessed right, but the ball passed a few centimetres wide without him needing to touch it. Messi covered his face with both palms, looked up at the Texas sky, and walked back. An Austrian fan in the stand had painted MESSI WHO? on his stomach. It felt, briefly, like a reasonable question. Twenty-nine minutes later he answered it. Almada released Medina down the left. Medina cut the ball back. Almada, reading something only he and Messi knew, let it run through without touching it. And Messi, who had been walking — as he does, as he always does, conserving something the rest of us cannot …
