Alvarez, the problem solver, provides Argentina late solution against Switzerland | Football News

In school, Julian Alvarez never missed his mathematics class. Whether he had a match the next day, or if he had returned from a long tournament, he never skipped the maths lessons of Luciana Alvarengue in the tiny Argentina town of Calchin in the Cordoba province. “He had a gift of solving problems, in his own ways, not always as it was in the textbook,” she told Argentina outlet Sports Pulse last year.In Kansas, Argentina had a problem. They couldn’t beat the cussed red wall of Switzerland, fuelled the perceived injustice of a red card brandished at their forward Breel Embolo, which dorted the game’s equilibrium. Down to ten men, the Swiss fought a battle they were always doomed to lose. Yet they strove, taking the game as deep as possible, annoying Lionel Messi and his troops, who were yet again made to endure a range of vivifying emotions. Both teams were drained, emotionally and physically, before Alvarez found the perfect equation.
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Only eight minutes remained until the tiebreakers. The game was played on an endless and directionless loop in the Switzerland box. Suddenly, Alvarez found the ball on his feet, from Manuel Lopez’s pass on the penalty area’s border, on the left side of the field. The box was a congregation of red shirts willing to shed blood and blue and white stripes who just wanted the match to end. Argentina would wish they could do without the heart-pounding drama, the hysteric fluctuations of fortune. Alvarez put an end to their labours of the days. He found himself in an unusual space. His eyes lit up, he took a couple of touches and let the ball rip to the top right corner from his right foot.
The improbability of the goal could be measured the number of people inside the box. Five Argentines and eight Swiss plus the goalkeeper. How the ball flew unscathed and untouched to nestle in the nets is not a mystery, but a reflection of Alvarez’s gifts, the man touted to be Argentina’s figurehead after Messi’s departure. There was maths in the shot, the weight of the shot, it’s made-to-measure angle, the revolutions, the curve and the parabola, and the drop.
Drag force, equation of motion, Magnus force he had applied all the principles maths and physics could teach.  He could feel the gravitational pull too. When all his teammates clambered on him he plunged to the ground. When the game restarted, he seemed disoriented with the frenzy and frolics around. Not every day does Messi plant a kiss on his forehead, as though handing over a legacy. Lautaro Martinez would embellish the goal tally, but Alvarez’s goal had killed the game. Martinez merely flogged a dead-horse. On cue, the crowd began to croon: “El que no salta es un ingle.” The one who doesn’t jump is an Englishman. The semifinal match-up with one of their horic rivals, England, cannot wait.
Argentina’s Julian Alvarez (9) scores his team’s second goal during the World Cup quarterfinal match against Switzerland in Kansas City. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Foremost was how Alvarez tracked the ball’s route amidst all the moving objects. The vision and clarity. A flatter shot would have bombed into the traffic; had the ball curled more, the goalkeeper would have saved it. Had the ball been hit more powerfully, it would have hoofed over the bar and would not have swerved as it eventually did. The goal was poetic, yet scientific. Or maybe, it would have been scientifically poetic.Story continues below this ad
The 26-year-old is widely regarded as the brightest spark in the post-Messi era. In Qatar, he reinvigorated Argentina’s frontline after the Saudi Arabia shudder. Dismantling Martinez, he made things tick more fluidly, with his pressing, running on the wing, crossing, and overall involvement in the buildup. Yet, you wonder why Alvarez didn’t make the next big leap, why he has “not” unburdened Messi from his goal-scoring duties, why he and his colleagues wait for Messi to inspire. Messi has dotted them, like an elder brother in a family. Perhaps this is the ignition point.
A match passed without Messi scoring, yet he wielded his clout. He assed the first goal, Alexis Mac Aller’s header from his corner. He had a right-footed shot bounce awkwardly in front of the goal; he created six chances, and four shots. A day such as this is a siner sign for Argentina. In that, the other hitherto juddering parts of the Argentina machine have begun to function smoothly in time for the semifinal.
ARGENTINA vs SWITZERLAND: AS IT HAPPENED
The Swiss game, despite their numerical superiority was a grind. It was their second game in knockouts that stretched to extra time. Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni confided after the game that they were lucky. “Today we suffered. We knew it was a difficult team, and they put us in real difficulty. We weren’t able to get out of certain situations. The truth is luck was on our side today, that’s the reality, because they had a player sent off and that’s when the team pushed forward,” he said.
The ouster of Embolo would be revisited. The incident occurred two minutes after Dan Ndoye scored the equaliser. Two minutes later, the referee showed a yellow card to Leandro Paredes for perceivably heavy challenge of Breel Embolo. But the VAR advised the referee to watch the on-field monitor in what is cinematically called a check for “Maken Identity.” Turned out that the referee had indeed brandished the card to the wrong player. Paredes was not only reprieved, but Embolo, who was already on a card, copped another yellow for simulation. He heard the marching orders, amidst tearful protests.Story continues below this ad
But adversity forged courage. Switzerland fought valiantly, hurling the bodies and stretching their mind’s will to repel Argentina’s relentless torrents of attack. They owed gratitude to Gregor Kobel, who was impenetrable like his predecessor Diego Benaglio, who pulled off stunning saves before he was breached in the 118th minute in the round-of-16 clash between them in 2014. Angel di Maria was the saviour then; Alvarez was the hero in Kansas. In his hometown, Calchin, Luciana Alvarengue would be a proud teacher. Her student has scored a goal that conformed to the precepts of geometry. And a goal of rare symmetry and significance.