In the 1-1 draw against Iceland, Messi had a very poor performance, even missing a penalty kick. Before the match against Croatia, the Argentina captain was expected to do something special against this opponent, to get an advantage in winning a ticket to the knockout round.
However, fans of the blue and white strip team could not expect that Argentina would play disjointed, uncoordinated and ineffective football. As a result, they conceded 3 goals against Croatia, thereby facing the risk of early admission to the 2018 World Cup in the group stage.
After the match, Croatia captain Luka Modric revealed the reason why he and his teammates could win against Argentina. Modric shared: "Argentina's poor results and performance came from the fact that we played well. Croatia created a solid system covering the entire pitch, especially when we didn't have the ball.
Messi is Argentina's most dangerous player. We separated him from the ball as well as our teammates. We approached Mascherano, making him unable to pass to Messi, extinguishing Argentina's attack from the water."
Indeed, a statistic shows that Croatia's defense has been very good at dividing Argentina's lines. That is, in the first half alone, Messi only had 20 touches, the second fewest on the Argentina side. The one who touched the ball at least was Aguero. The Man City striker has only touched the ball 7 times.
A player who is capable of organizing the game and hunting goals like Messi but only touches the ball 20 times, and each time that is immediately completely blocked by the Croatian defense.
As for Aguero, a key striker only has 7 touches after 45 minutes to understand how excellent the Croatian defense is.
Difficulty in attacking, and another silly mistake by goalkeeper will Caballero caused Argentina to suffer a disastrous goal and quickly collapsed, then suffered a 0-3 defeat in the following minutes.
