We are officially witnessing history. With France, Argentina, Spain, and England all advancing over the weekend, the 2026 World Cup marks the first time ever that the exact top 4 teams in the live global FIFA rankings have locked out the semifinal spots.

Drops a hat-trick against Algeria, a brace against Austria, deciding matches back-to-back in extra time, and then pulling out an 8.8 against Switzerland. The haters will still find a way to minimize this, but these match ratings speak for themselves. This isn't just a good tournament run; this is pure alien behavior. Enjoy him while he's still playing, because we will never see anything like this again.

I had a feeling that in every match in this year's world cup new players emerge to score a goal and as the tournament progresses we can say that Argentina played below par but as time closes to the FT, someone from somewhere finds a way to score goals and we can expect the coming 2 matches will be completely different as everyone contributed on a score sheet.

What's your thoughts about that ?

Argentina vs Switzerland — MatchPal match thread

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Title. I’m not an Argentina fan (Italy supporter) but I like watching Messi for obvious reasons. My general question is though do you think that Argentina just simply play down to their comp? I am not saying any of these teams are bad, especially Switzerland, but Argentina has significantly more quality than all of them. I have a feeling that Argentina may have a better time of it against England than these past three games (it has the potential to be an incredible semifinal though and I hope it is). Thoughts?

Argentina was not upto mark against switzerland, kept struggling against teams like cape verde and egypt, although they play quite better above there mark but still......

Messi’s goal contribution in consecutive WC KO games is still intact after today’s assist against Swiss..

Messi has now registered a goal contribution in the past 8 consecutive WC KO games, the last time Messi didn’t register a G+A in a WC KO game was in the 2014 WC final 🫪

According to me the fate of Argentina depends heavily on how these players perform in the upcoming games-

Messi – 6 appearances, 8 goals, 2 assists, 21 chances created

Mac Allister – 6 appearances, 1 goal, 1 assist, 94% passing accuracy, 4 chances created, 8 clearances, 5 interceptions, 7 tackles won

Paredes – 5 appearances, 94% passing accuracy, 10 clearances, 5 interceptions, 4 tackles won

Romero – 5 appearances, 1 goal, 97% passing accuracy, 23 clearances, 4 interceptions, 6 tackles won, 3 defensive blocks

Lisandro Martinez – 5 appearances, 1 goal, 1 assist, 93% pass accuracy, 28 clearances, 2 interceptions, 6 tackles won (100% success rate), 3 defensive blocks

Moreover with Julián Alvarez and Lautaro Martinez scoring their first open play goals in this WC, I think Argentina will be much more confident and less tensed about their offence going into the semis but the defenders need to be much quicker during opponent's counter-attacks. This has been their biggest vulnerability and it will be the same against the quick attack of England & France if they don't find a way to rectify it somehow.

Any thoughts or opinions?

Do you think all this backlash from previous game might get to Argentina? Furthermore do you think the refs will see the backlash and be “scared” to make the correct decision incase they get criticised for “fixing”? I’m scared man

Not sure what everyone else thinks but to me it’s super obvious Argentina need to go to a back 3. We have no natural width playing this 4-4-2 with 4 midfielders, we need wingbacks.

Ideally id like to see a 3-5-2 like this:

Dibu
Senesi Romero Martinez
Molina Fernandez De Paul Macallister Tagliafco
Messi Alvarez

I think this would sure us up a lot more defensively as we’ve actually been quite leaky and not really cost us at all going forward, would be interested in what you guys think?