Toe to toe with Messi

Canadians put up a fight against heavyweight Argentina in raucous tournament opener

- JOE CALLAGHAN

Lionel Messi makes a move on Canadian goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau but fails to score Thursday night in Atlanta.

Lionel Messi looked to the skies and smiled that smile that makes him look like a boy again, ageless. The immortal man of modern soccer, its game-changer, had just bore down on Maxime Crépeau’s goal and come away with … nothing?

We were more than an hour into the most daunting date the Canadian men’s national team had ever faced and Jesse Marsch’s side was hanging tough with the sport’s icon and the rest of Argentina’s world champions. Copa America champions, too, while we’re at it. Canada was at it, a combination of Crépeau and Derek Cornelius denying Messi in that 64th-minute moment — a dance with a deity, the raucous, Argentine-heavy crowd inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium as disbelieving as Messi that it wasn’t 2-0.

It was only 1-0 after a first half when Canada had arguably been the better side, which is a startling thing to say about a team which has spent so much of the past 18 months in the depths. But in the month-ish under Marsch, Alphonso Davies and Co. are rising again. Thursday night they rose to a hell of an occasion, the 2024 Copa America opener, before it eventually got to them.

Julián Álvarez scored the vital opening goal shortly after a halftime interval when Argentina had delayed its return, perhaps freezing Canada a little, allowing Marsch’s players to consider the gravity of it all. Sure, they’d drawn 0-0 with world No. 2 France a couple of weeks ago. But this was bigger, weightier, as heavy as it gets until the World Cup gets here two summers from now.

Argentina's Julián Álvarez buried the opening goal in Thursday night's match.