Lionel Messi's team Argentina has entered the last eight (quarterfinals) of the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar with a narrow victory. In the pre-quarterfinal match on Saturday night, Argentina entered the last eight by winning 2-1 against Australia, a much weaker team in the FIFA rankings. Along with this, Argentina has confirmed the meeting with the European team Netherlands in the last eight. The Netherlands won 3-1 against the USA in the first match and entered the quarter-finals. Now, the Netherlands and Argentina will have an exciting match to enter the semi-finals.
Argentina took a 1-0 lead against Australia in the first half of the match which started at 12:45 midnight Nepali time at Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium. Captain Messi scored a brilliant goal for Argentina and gave the team the early lead. For Argentina, who looked very slow until the 30th minute of the game, in the 35th minute, Messi shot a low shot from inside the box into a goal. Messi shot a low shot very cleverly between the 3 defenders of Australia, in which the opposing goalkeeper had no chance to save.
Nicolas Otamendi assisted Messi's goal. This goal is the third goal of this World Cup for Messi, and this is the first goal scored in the knockout stage of the World Cup. Today's match is the 1000th match of Messi's career. In which Messi managed to make his thousandth game memorable by scoring a beautiful goal and winning the team. Messi, who was criticized for missing a penalty in the match against Poland, responded by scoring a goal in today's match. In the first half, when Australia played very defensively, Argentina had to struggle a lot for the first goal.
So far, Australia's post had not been able to hit a shot on target until the 34th minute. After targeting 1 goal in the first half, Argentina managed to score the second goal in the 57th minute of the game. This time the goalkeeper made a mistake inside the box for Australia. When the goalkeeper was inside the box, the young player in Argentina, Julian Alvarez, went from the goalkeeper and the goalkeeper tried to pass the ball between the players to clear the ball. When Argentina scored 2 goals after losing the ball and went to an easy victory with the same lead, he mistakenly scored a goal on his own post in the 77th minute of the game. The way was opened for Australia to return to the game after the shot by the Australian player hit Argentina's midfielder Enzo Fernandez and the reflected ball went straight to the net. However, in the rest of the time, Australia could not score the second goal, and the game went to the previous stage with Argentina winning. And Australia's World Cup tour ended in the last 16.