Greece held down Argentina for almost 80 minutes, successfully shut down Lionel Messi (as promised by coach Otto Rehhagel), but lost the game 2-0 at the end as well as the opportunity to advance in the second round of the World Cup 2010 finals. The Greeks came in the Peter Mokaba Stadium of Polokwane with an expected defensive strategy, while hoping for Nigeria to win the other game of Group B. Diego Maradona decided to rest more than half of his starting 11, but with so many choices on their bench Argentina took the three points scoring two goals in the last minutes of the game.
So Argentina started the game with three offensive players, and had an 80% overall ball possession for the first minutes of the match. Greek goalkeeper Alexandros Tzorvas finally made a great performance (after conceiving some silly goals in the previous group stage matches), blocking some tough shot from Sergio Agüero in 18′, Juan Sebastián Verón a minute later, and Agüero again in 32′. Argentina camped in front of the Greek penalty area for the rest of the first half, but Tzorvas was there successfully stopping Maxi Rodríguez in 45′ as well as Messi’s curve ball a minute into extra time.
The half time whistle gave Greece some space to finally breathe, and coming back in the game lost probably their biggest chance of the entire World Cup 2010 tournament: Georgios Samaras (that was playing alone in the offence) took advantage of Martín Demichelis’ mistake, fired two consecutive shots but barely missed the target just three minutes in the second half. The bad luck continued for Greece, with two important players getting injured in less that 2 minutes. Both Kostas Katsouranis and Vasilis Torosidis were forced to leave the game, and since Rehhagel had already used another substitution at half-time was unable to do anything else and change Samaras that was clearly tired in the offence.
Argentina of course took advantage of the situation, and changed gears in order to finish the group stage matches with another victory. Messi sent a corner in the heart of the Greek defence, and Martín Demichelis scored the goal with a header (that was probably an offensive foul). Greece collapsed after the goal so Messi made a fantastic only to stop at the post, and a few minutes later Martín Palermo took the rebound again after Messi’s shot to score a second one for Argentina.
