Messi’s brilliance rescues Argentina once again

Argentina 1 Iran 0

Lionel Messi broke Iran’s resistance and their hearts too here in Belo Horizonte with a wonderful injury time strike that preserved Argentina’s 100 per cent record after two group games.

With time running out and the Iranians having actually looked the more likely to make the breakthrough over the course of the second half, the Barcelona striker cut in from the right past Reza Ghoochannejad and curled a magnificent shot fractionally beyond the reach of Alireza Haghighi and into the top left corner. The team’s supporters reacted ecstatically while the Iranians, like their players on the pitch, were left distraught at how close they had come to securing a point that might well have helped pave the way to a place in the second round.

The Iranians had been expected to make life tough for their opponents by digging in at the back but they did a good deal more than that. For spells early on they were indeed pinned down and while they worked hard and resisted well, they were lucky on one or two occasions too that Argentina’s finishing simply wasn’t a little bit better.

Pushing forward themselves in the second half, though, they made the other side of the South Americans’ game look like a real weakness. At one point they felt they should have had a penalty with the referee’s decision that Pablo Zabaleta’s challenge on Fulham’s Ashkan Dejagah had been fair prompting a furious reaction from the Iranian and at another point his looping header forced Sergio Romero into a brilliant save. He had to save again from the striker late on when the Iranians broke and almost threatened to steal victory themselves just before conceding.

Overall, there were a handful of times when Argentina’s centre halves looked to be completely at sea and they were especially lucky to get away with the free header they allowed Ghoochannejad in the 53rd minute when the striker pushed the ball straight at the goalkeeper when he clearly should have done better.

Argentina, though, stuck with it and their captain came good. They had started with Messi’s preferred 4-3-3 formation although the striker himself actually drifted off the front pair in the space from midfield and attack from where he constantly looked to link things up or run at the Iranians.

They were tightly packed and well organised but Argentina still managed to create chances over the course of the first half, just not very many and they struggled to hit the target with Haghigi forced into just one really good save, from Aguero, before the break plus a stop from Gonzalo Higuain who looked as though he had been trying to cross when he fired in low from the right.

The Napoli striker was poor with the result that several of his side’s more promising attacking moves broke down. Messi was comparatively quiet but Angel Di Maria looked lively down the left hand side and Aguero posed a fairly constant threat around the area for a while.

It was Ezequiel Garay who had the best chance of the first period, though, with the centre back climbing high above the Iranian defence to meet Messi’s floated free only to head over from a few yards when he really should have scored. The defender must have been at least as relieved as the team’s supporters to see Messi’s shot go in.

ARGENTINA: Sergio Romero; Pablo Zabaleta, Federico Fernandez, Ezequiel Garay; Marcos Rojo; Fernando Gago,Javier Mascherano; Angel Di Maria (6 Lucas Biglia, 90 + 4 mins); 10 Lionel Messi, Gonzalo Higuain (18 Rodrigo Palacio, 76 mins), Sergio Aguero (22 Ezequiel Lavezzi, 76 mins).

IRAN: Alireza Haghighi; Pejman Montazeri, Amir-Hossein Sadeghi, Jalal Hosseini, Mehrdad Pouladi; Masoud Shojae (2 Khosro Heydari, 77 mins), Andranik Teymourian, Javad Nekounam, Ehsan Hajsafi (8 Reza Haghighi, 88 mins); Reza Ghoochannejhad, Ashkan Dejagah (9 Alireza Jahanbakhsh, 85 mins).

Yellow cards: Masoud Shojae, Javad Nekounam.

Referee: M Mazic (Serbia).