Seventeen yellow cards, flying tackles and constant clashes: the Netherlands and Argentina played out a legendary dust-up
At some point late on a wild night in Lusail, Lionel Messi was asked what had happened out there. “A bit of everything,” he said. There had been four goals, eight penalties, 17 yellow cards and one red. In the end, there was only one winner, even if they had to win it twice. Maybe even three times. Or, to put it another way: as the Argentina goalkeeper, Emiliano Martínez, departed the pitch, he did it with a defiant look in a Dutch direction, shouting his expletive-rich message in English to make sure it wasn’t lost.
It was that kind of night and at that point it wasn’t over. “We suffered more than we should have done,” Messi said. “At 2-0, we had it under control, we shouldn’t have had to go to extra time, let alone penalties.”
