Argentina 3-2 Cape Verde: Own Goal Spares the Champions From the Biggest Upset in World Cup History

Argentina are into the last 16, and they will not want to see the tape. The reigning world champions came within an own goal of the biggest upset in the history of the World Cup, beating Cape Verde 3-2 only after extra time and only after the debutants had drawn level twice and forced Lionel Scaloni's side to the very brink of elimination in Miami. It ended with Cristian Romero's header deflecting in off Diney Borges in the 111th minute, a winner scored by the wrong team's boot, and with a Hard Rock Stadium crowd of 64,478 unsure whether it had watched a rescue or a robbery. Cape Verde lost. They also, somehow, won the night.

The numbers said this should have been routine. We laid out the gulf before kick-off: a squad worth close to £700m against one valued at under £50m, 16 World Cup winners against tournament debutants, a country of 46 million against an archipelago of 600,000, roughly a fifth of the population of Buenos Aires. For long stretches of a chaotic evening none of it mattered in the slightest.

Messi settles the nerves, briefly

It began the way the odds insisted it would. Messi opened the scoring on 29 minutes with the kind of touch and finish that makes the difficult look like a formality, settling Argentine nerves and, it seemed, the tie. For half an hour more this was the procession everyone had forecast, the champions in control, the debutants doing well to keep the score respectable.

Then, just before the hour, the evening tilted. Deroy Duarte squeezed an effort into the far corner on 59 minutes, and a stadium that had come to see Messi coronate himself found itself watching something else entirely. The equaliser did not just level the score; it changed the air in the place. Cape Verde, who had already drawn with Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia to get here, suddenly looked like a side that believed the impossible was merely difficult.

Vozinha, again

Standing between Argentina and their composure, as he has stood all tournament, was Vozinha. The 40-year-old goalkeeper who arrived in the United States as a near-unknown and a free agent produced eight saves on the night, two of them from Messi free-kicks that had "goal" written on them the moment they left his boot. On 73 minutes he kept out the first. Deep into stoppage time at the end of normal time, a Messi free-kick deflected into his path and he denied the great man again. There is a version of this match, several versions, in which Argentina score four and stroll. Vozinha refused to let any of them happen.

What followed his heroics was a sloppy, laboured Argentina, a champion side visibly rattled by an opponent it had been told to ignore. They saw out normal time without control rather than with it, and carried their unease into extra time, which is exactly the wrong emotion to take into 30 minutes against a team with nothing to lose.

Two minutes of relief, then the goal of the tournament

Argentina thought they had escaped in the second minute of extra time. Lisandro Martinez whipped a shot into the top right corner on 92 minutes, a finish of real quality, and the relief that poured out of the Argentine benches told you everything about how uncomfortable the previous half hour had been. Order restored, dream over, back to business.

Except Cape Verde had one more act in them, and it was the best of the lot. On 103 minutes Sidny Lopes Cabral curled in a strike that Sky Sports called a contender for goal of the tournament, a shot of such purity that it silenced the Miami Stadium and, briefly, the footballing world with it. Two-two, in extra time, against the world champions, scored by a full-back who had been at Benfica and is joining Trabzonspor. Belief, which had flickered at 1-1, now caught properly alight. For eight minutes Cape Verde were not surviving against Argentina. They were beating them.

The cruellest way to lose

Football does not often let the smaller side hold that feeling for long. On 111 minutes Argentina won a corner, Romero rose to meet it, and his header deflected off Diney Borges and past Vozinha for the goal that decided everything. There is no crueller way to go out of a tournament than off the body of one of your own, no scoreline that better captures how fine the margin was between the impossible and the ordinary. Argentina had needed a Cape Verde defender to score the winner they could not manage themselves.

Scaloni's side will take the result, because that is what champions do, and move on to a last-16 meeting with Egypt. They will know, privately, that this was the sort of performance that gets examined rather than celebrated. Messi apart, Argentina were second best for long passages against a team ranked 64th in the world, and the gap between their reputation and their display on the night was wide enough to worry a manager with bigger examinations ahead.

But the story, as Sky Sports' Patrick Rowe put it, lies with the losers. Cape Verde bow out of their first World Cup having drawn with the European champions, taken the reigning world champions to the last kick of extra time, and produced a goalkeeper and a goal that this tournament will remember for years. A nation of just over 600,000 people, smaller than most cities that stage a World Cup match, leaves the United States, Canada and Mexico having made the whole tournament stop and watch. If anyone still needed convincing that the expanded 48-team format was worth it, the Blue Sharks spent a month making the argument for them. They lost in Miami. They will be welcomed home as heroes, and few who watched this will begrudge them the reception.

Sources: Final score and extra-time timeline, Messi's opener (29'), Duarte's equaliser (59'), Vozinha's eight saves including the denials of two Messi free-kicks (73' and 90+5'), Lisandro Martinez's strike (92'), Sidny Lopes Cabral's goal (103') and its goal-of-the-tournament billing, the Romero header deflecting off Diney Borges for the winner (111'), the 64,478 attendance at the Hard Rock Stadium, the biggest-upset-in-history framing, the population comparison, Cape Verde's group-stage draws with Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia, and Argentina's last-16 tie with Egypt, as reported by Patrick Rowe for Sky Sports.