Argentina are still broken, but Lionel Messi and Marcos Rojo bought them time

After Argentina beat Nigeria, 2-1, yesterday to advance to the knockout round of the 2018 World Cup, my colleague Kim McCauley brought up a recurring scene in the Bourne film franchise. In just about every film, there’s a part where Jason Bourne gets injured, usually shot, and he has to break into a hospital or pharmacy and perform some emergency surgery on himself. An injection of lidocaine. Tweezers easing a bullet out of his thigh.

The mend is always just enough to keep Bourne moving. It’s not a permanent fix. He’s not healed by any stretch of the imagination — the dude is still shot. But he is alive.

That’s Argentina right now.

Argentina advanced out of the group stages on Tuesday thanks to a Lionel Messi goal that only he could score — I mean that — and then a volley off the weak foot of a central defender, Marcos Rojo, who was in the Nigeria box for some reason.

This is still a very imperfect team. And that’s even beyond reports of an actual mutiny and the coach Jorge Sampaoli basically being removed of his decision-making abilities. (There appeared to be video of him consulting with Messi before making subs during the game against Nigeria.)

Sampaoli hasn’t been great. And the lineup he picked for the Croatia game was probably as bad a lineup as possible to pick, one that totally exposed all of Argentina’s weaknesses and led to a nation turning on him. (I can see the thought behind his decisions in that game, which I discussed earlier this World Cup, but, hoo buddy, did it totally backfire on him.)

But Sampaoli isn’t the only issue here. He went with Argentina’s preferred 4-2-3-1 lineup against Nigeria, played better passers over the high pressing wingers he was liking in the earlier games, and Argentina still struggled to break down their opponent.

Argentina’s defense isn’t great. Javier Mascherano is fearless (he spent the entire second half yesterday covered in blood, which apparently no one thought to address?) and has had a great career ... but he’s currently playing his club soccer in China and looks like it. He can’t keep up with the pace of the game. And Argentina have to play him because they don’t have any other options there.

That’s the biggest problem with Argentina: Their best players can’t be on the field at the same time, because too many of them replicate what others do. Paulo Dybala and Giovani Lo Celso are two of the better young midfielders in the world, stars for Juventus and PSG respectively, yet they haven’t seen the field yet. Why? Because they’re smaller, creative midfield types who aren’t great defenders and Argentina already has a glut of those guys.

There has to be a temptation if you’re Sampaoli, or Messi, or Mascherano, or whoever is running this team right now, to just throw all the good players on the field and see what the hell happens. Toss in Dybala, and Lo Celso, and Messi, and Di Maria, and Banega, and just try and go Harlem Globetrotters on them. If you or I were playing with this Argentina team in a game of FIFA, that’s what we’d do. And it might have even worked.

But the problem is the time for that has passed. If they were going to play that way, attack and possess, try to hang six goals on every opponent, they needed to work it out in the group stage. You can’t try that in the Round of 16 against France. France are an imperfectly coached team, but if Argentina can’t defend, and the combination of Griezmann-Mbappe-Dembele get going on the counter-attack, they’re dead.

These are all things Argentina will have to figure out before the next game. I don’t have good answers. All I do know is Messi’s brilliance and Rojo’s daring bought them some time. They might not have enough, and this team is still very flawed. But they’re alive. And when you have Messi, that might be enough.