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The World Cup is as good as over for Lionel Messi and Argentina thanks to an embarrassing 3-0 loss to Croatia, who played another fantastic match in this World Cup. Thanks to goals from Rebic, Modric and Rakitic, Croatia qualifies for the knockout stages only for the second time in their history as an independent nation.
In the first half both teams had good chances to take the lead. Enzo Pérez had an open goal in front of him but could not get the ball into the net. Moments later Mandzukic had a great chance to give Croatia the lead but could only head the ball wide.
The game went into halftime 0-0. The most interesting stat of the first half was that the amount of fouls committed by both teams was almost 3 times the total shots taken.
This was Messi's chance to step up and give a reply to Ronaldo's blistering start to the World Cup so far. But he failed to make an impact as can be said for most of the Argentine players.
Th only Argentine who had a meaningful contribution to the scoreline was Willy Caballero whose mistake lead to the first goal. Paulo Dybala got his World Cup debut when he came on for Enzo Pérez in the 68th minute. But even he could not make an impact on the game.
Croatia's Modric extended their lead in the 80th minute with an absolute peach of a goal. His goal had shades of the goal he scored against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Champions League.
Rakitic made it 3-0 in injury time to add insult to injury for Argentina. Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic lead the team from the front and got a goal apiece to show for it on the night. As expected, twitter went crazy. Without further ado, here are the best tweets.
