Match Review & Highlights: Argentina 3-1 Mexico

Let’s be clear about this. Carlos Tevez was very much offside when receiving the pass from Leo Messi for Argentina’s first goal, and Argentina can consider themselves lucky it wasn’t disallowed.

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So Mexico have every right to feel a little cheated. But – much like Germany did earlier – Argentina did the best thing a team can do after benefiting from a controversial refereeing decision, and extended their lead to make sure this game wasn’t decided by a bad call.

Gonzalo Higuain scored his fourth of the tournament just seven minutes after the Tevez incident, and that includes the time it took for all the arguing. Ricardo Osorio was the Mexico defender who looked like he was trying to roll the ball and turn outside, but instead poked it to Higuain, who showed Osorio how to correctly roll a ball when he used the move to go around Mexico keeper Oscar Perez and make it 2-0.

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That’s Gabi Heinze ever so charmingly taking a swipe at the camera by the way.

In some ways Carlos Tevez had been to blame for the controversy around the first goal. It’s possible that Messi’s shot would have gone in anyway – and perfectly legally – had Tevez just stayed out of the way. But the Man City man more than made up for that moment when he did this in the second half:

Fantastiche tor, as the German commentator says. Goal of the tournament contender maybe?

The one bright spot for Mexico was the consolation goal scored by young Javier Hernandez. There’d been quite the campaign for coach Javier Aguirre to finally start Hernandez instead of Guillermo Franco in this game, and Aguirre had finally relented. It wasn’t enough to win the game, but you can’t argue with a first touch and finish like this:

If anyone is able to pinpoint Hernandez’ exact location, please pass that information onto Argentina #2 Martín Demichelis, who’s still looking for him.

So, Mexico’s World Cup run ends in the Round of 16 for the fifth time in a row. But by the looks of some of the young talent wearing green in South Africa, Mexico can look forward to seeing how far the likes of Hernandez, Gio dos Santos and Andrés Guardado can take El Tri in 2014.

As for Argentina… Remember when Maradona was clueless and his team was a shambles? That feels like it all happened in some sort of alternate reality that I can only just about remember being a part of. Now it’s on to the quarter-finals where Argentina will meet Germany in a game that already has me salivating.