Rebic + Modric + Rakitic tick-off Argentina in World Cup Soccer Match

EKATERINBURG, Russia — A World Cup of teetering titans has found its way to its most staggering scenes yet. They happened Thursday night in Nizhny Novgorod as Croatia cut Argentina to 3-0 ribbons, and they proved jarring enough to dredge all kinds of tears from witnesses, with the Argentine ones a broth of dejection and confusion.

After all, the soaring and globe-trotting career of Lionel Messi never did figure to find its most emphatic bummer in Nizhny Novgorod — that city 797 years old, 250 miles east of Moscow, 8,625 miles northeast of Buenos Aires and formerly named Gorky. It never did figure to happen in some World Cup second group match, a juncture at which Argentina and arguably the world’s best player surely wouldn’t find themselves in a precarious wheeze.

It utterly did not figure to feature Messi’s fourth Argentina manager in four World Cups, Jorge Sampaoli, saying, “First and foremost I beg for the fans’ forgiveness.” And it probably didn’t figure to happen against Croatia, certainly no slouch but 0-4 previously in World Cups against South American teams.

All that came true, though, and lent the largest crater to Messi’s long World Cup road, which started in 2006 at age 18 in the 74th minute of a 6-0 win against Serbia and Montenegro, which no longer exists as such, when he quickly assisted on a goal by Hernan Crespo. From there his excellence, which got his Barcelona shirts sold all over the planet and worn on every continent even as we can’t be sure about Antarctica, began to fuel the natural wish that his stewardship of a World Cup win for Argentina would just make a lot of sense.

Now his ledger of four World Cups not only features only one venture beyond the quarterfinals (to the final in 2014), but it reels with two cases of uncommon shredding: a 4-0 annihilation by Germany in South Africa in the 2010 quarterfinals, and this 3-0 matter where a goalkeeper’s howler — and Ante Rebic’s fine, ensuing score for Croatia that made it 1-0 in the 53rd minute — somehow left a team of Argentina’s alleged caliber “emotionally broken,” in its manager’s remarkable words.

“Argentina y un papelon Mundial,” headlined the Argentine newspaper Clarin.

A bad show. How in the World Cup? As Diego Maradona looked on, the man who piloted Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title took on the countenance of a film critic who can’t believe the slop he’s watching.

It threw Group D, deemed among the toughest, into a strange, new soupiness. Overnight from Thursday, Croatia stood on six points, safely booked to the knockout stage with only a match with Iceland remaining. Iceland and Argentina stood on one point, having drawn 1-1 between themselves last Saturday as Messi missed a penalty. Nigeria had zero after one match, a loss to Croatia ahead of a match with Iceland on Friday.

[All the World Cup tiebreaker rules and knockout round scenarios, explained]

For just one permutation, Argentina could hope for a Nigeria win over Iceland on Friday, then a win over Nigeria in its third group match next Tuesday, plus a Croatia win over Iceland. Who knew Argentina would have to sit around doing some hoping? Who knew the idea of it gathering the parts of its sudden jalopy well enough to beat Nigeria would become something of considerable question?

“The reality of the Argentina squad clouds Lionel Messi’s brilliance,” went the manager’s assessment. “The team doesn’t gel as well as it should.”

Together, it got him few shining chances in Nizhny Novgorod, with the Croatians worthy of some credit there. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Messi will turn 31. Come 2022 in Qatar, he will turn 35. He already sort-of retired from international play once. He already came here as the lead actor in a drama about his alleged final real chance.

It’s possible his World Cup career will groan with a quarterfinal loss to Germany in 2006 on penalty kicks in a match in which the manager kept him seated at age 18, causing mass guff back home; that 4-0 decimation by Germany in 2010 in which he didn’t matter because nobody could have; the strange 1-0 loss to Germany in the 2014 final in which he couldn’t quite come through; and, wait . . .

A failure even to appear in the round of 16?

That wasn’t part of the script.

Chuck Cuplpepper