Forget
We spend most of our days living some basic moments. You wake up, go about your day, make sure your family is ok, wind down and decompress, and go to bed.
Sometimes you do or say something you wish you could take back, stew on it and replay all the ways it could’ve gone differently, all because it was a moment in your life that felt… off.
All in service to shaking it off and being a better person the next day. You want to forgive yourself. You want to move on and forget.
There are other days like yesterday that we don’t want to forget, or some will want to forget but they know they’ll never be able to. What we witnessed was THAT great.
I think I spent my Friday like almost everyone else in the world. You’re working but not really. You do enough that you need to for the day or week, your manager messages you here and there, you respond, but really you know your mind is on the two biggest teams in the world. You watch Neymar go down without ever taking a penalty kick, wondering what the manager was even thinking taking Vinicius Jr. out among other things, and how he shot himself and his country’s hopes in the foot.
You start thinking, Is Argentina going to face a similar fate as Brazil? How will the greatest player respond?
And respond he did.
With the whole world watching him, with the Netherlands having a plan to stop him, Lionel Messi delivered with one of the greatest passes you’ll ever see, with a penalty kick that seemed to seal it away, with a free kick that you still can’t believe didn’t go in, and with one of four penalty kicks that sent Argentina to the semifinals where they’ll take on Croatia.
The Dutch never gave up. The animosity clearly showed in the highly emotional match that saw 15 yellow cards given and plenty more that were mysteriously not given after the benches cleared when Argentinian Leandro Paredes kicked a ball to be reset after a foul at the Netherlands bench. Down 2-0 they stormed back with a header in the 83rd and an absolutely brilliant set piece off of an idiotic foul in the 11th minute of regulation stoppage time that caught everyone everywhere off guard.
The improbable happened. And those thoughts came back, Is Argentina going to face a similar fate as Brazil? How will the greatest player respond?
The difference between what Brazil and Argentina experienced after their leads collapsed is that Argentina had time to recollect itself while Brazil went into penalties shellshocked from a 116th minute Croatian goal wondering why they were even in that position to begin with. Messi’s guys had 30 minutes to score again or win in penalties, and during that time they were able to gain momentum as they tried but just could not get the ball in the net.
For the first half of extra time, it felt as though it was the Dutch’s match to lose. Then the Argentinians responded and it swung back the other way. After letting their guards down for a bit up 2-0 just trying to hold on, they rose back to the moment and looked like they wanted it. You thought they’d win in penalties, and Goalkeeper Emi Martinez’s stop of Virgil van Dijk’s kick followed by Messi’s penalty going in with ease made it all the more certain. Another stop followed by Paredes, Montiel, and Lautaro Martinez makes and Argentina moved on while his supporters celebrated worldwide.
I spent the match watching at a sports restaurant/bar with my cousins. I reserved a table ahead of time, and I’m glad I did because it got packed. We got there a bit early, and the tables to either of our sides were families wearing their light blue and white jerseys showing support for their home country. They asked us where we were from, we told them Bangladesh, and they showed us some love because of the recent story about Bengalis supporting Argentina in Qatar and at home (it’s kind of split, some Bengalis are big Brazil fans). It’s always been kind of easy for me to root for them. One of my brother’s good friends growing up is from there. I was always the youngest in the crowd, and he always treated me like everyone else. No one really batted an eye at a 13-year-old hanging out with the adults. So, every one of the Argentina heartbreaks felt like one of mine.
We went through the emotions together. The hype before the game started, getting just slightly annoyed when the tech guy was playing Phil Collins instead of letting them sing the national anthem with their team, rooting for greatness and getting to witness greatness, getting tense when it was 2-1, being deflated but slightly hopeful when it was 2-2, being locked in during the always tense penalty kicks, and dancing and jumping up and down and shouting various celebrations when the match was over. I was reminded again of the power of community and how capable of love we are. I’ll likely never see those people again but…
Aside from people rooting for the Dutch and maybe Cristiano Ronaldo fans, the world of sports rejoiced at what they saw. We’ll never forget that day for the rest of our lives. Why would we want to?