Cape Verde: The Island That Almost Ended Argentina.
Written By: Landon Pulmano
Contributor | Sideline Society Media
In what might be game of the tournament many expected Argentina to breeze past Cape verde that wasn’t the case.
That's the part worth sitting with. A nation of 525,000 people, ranked 67th in the world, made the defending champions look mortal on the sport's biggest stage. Cape Verde came into this tournament as a footnote, ten islands off the coast of West Africa that nobody outside their own federation expected to survive the group stage. They held Spain scoreless. Faced off against Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. By the time they walked out at Hard Rock Stadium to face Messi's Argentina, they had stopped playing like a team hoping to compete and started playing like a team that expected to win.
Messi did what Messi does, scoring in the 29th minute to become the first player in World Cup history with 20 career goals in the competition. For a while, it looked like the kind of moment that gets remembered on its own, a record broken en route to a comfortable result. Argentina was in control until Deroy Duarte beat Emiliano Martinez, off an assist from captain Ryan Mendes, and the game Argentina thought they were playing disappeared.
What kept Cape Verde alive as long as it did was viral sensation and 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha, who spent the match playing like a man half his age. He denied Messi one-on-one. He scrambled to smother a quick free kick before Cape Verde's wall had even set. He got a hand to a deflected strike in the closing minutes of regulation. Argentina appealed for a penalty after the ball struck Pico Lopes's arm, only to have it overturned when replay showed the ball had caught his head first. It was the kind of call that can deflate a team chasing a result. Cape Verde didn't deflate. They pushed the game into extra time, where it only got stranger.
Lisandro Martinez restored Argentina's lead early in the additional period. Cape Verde answered again, this time through Sidny Lopes Cabral, a left back who buried a right footed strike into the top corner. He then runs into the stands to give his girlfriend a hug. It was the kind of celebration that only makes sense in the moment it happens.
The own goal that finally ended it came in the 111th minute, when Cristian Romero rose to meet a Messi corner and his header deflected off Diney Borges into his own net. Argentina held on from there, but "held on" undersells what the final ten minutes actually looked like from the Argentine bench. Argentina will now face Egypt in Atlanta on July 7 in the round of 16.
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