Superstar Lionel Messi led Argentina to a commanding 3-0 victory over 2018 runners-up Croatia to reach the final of Qatar\u2019s football World Cup.
\nThe 35-year-old captain opened the scoring in the 34th minute after converting a penalty won by striker Julian Alvarez when he was brought down by Croatia goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic.
\nMessi went on to set up Alvarez for the following two goals that chiselled away Croatia\u2019s chances of making it to a second straight final and 37-year-old captain Luka Modric\u2019s dreams of hoisting the cup.
\nWhile Croatia had more possession of the ball throughout Tuesday\u2019s encounter, they were not able to register a single shot on goal.
\nThe European side will now go on to play in the third-place playoff at Khalifa International Stadium on Saturday.
\nMessi\u2019s performance made a powerful statement at Lusail Stadium, where Argentina will return on Sunday to face the victors of Wednesday\u2019s semifinal match between France and Morocco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superstar Lionel Messi led Argentina to a commanding 3-0 victory over 2018 runners-up Croatia to reach the final of Qatar\u2019s football World Cup. The 35-year-old…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3617,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}