Doha: In all the build-up to Argentina’s grand opening – and the eternal quest of Lionel Messi – at the World Cup here, the world forgot to talk about Saudi Arabia. French philosopher Sartre’s wry observation that in football, everything was complicated with the presence of the opposite team, never rang truer than at the hot, muggy cauldron of the mammoth Lusail stadium here on Tuesday.
The Saudi team, almost as if incidental to the context just before Tuesday, came up with a riddle you had forgotten to account for, and one that continues to make Messi’s quest now even more Sisyphean than it has already been.
It was a result of the ages, a famous 2-1 come-from-behind, soar over-the-skies win that instantly emotionally united the Gulf region — beset with political and economic differences not so long ago — in the space of a second half 45 minutes and nearly a quarter-hour of injury time. With Doha awash since the past week either in the green of Mexico or Argentina’s pale blue, suddenly we were discovering that Saudi Arabia not only had a colour, they had a voice too. On Tuesday, it was reverberating at the Lusail, rising in the Gulf and echoing all over the football world, that now they have a presence too.
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