The clock in the Lusail Stadium is ticking down. The 90 minutes are almost up, and Argentina are 2-1 up against France in the World Cup Final.
Suddenly, one of the French players goes down with cramp. Argentina are within their rights to play on, but their right-back, Nahuel Molina, does the honourable thing and kicks the ball into touch deep in his own half so that his opponent can be treated.
The seconds tick by, but eventually the game re-starts in the accepted way, with the ball being thrown back to Molina. Argentina’s manager, Lionel Scaloni, knows the game is almost done and expects Molina to clear the ball into touch, as far away from his team’s goal as possible.
Instead, Molina shanks his clearance, and the ball ends up at the feet of France playmaker Antoine Griezmann in midfield. Griezmann is suffering from cramp, too, but somehow drives forward one more time, before launching an incredible 30-yard shot which ends up in the back of the Argentinian net for a late equaliser.
A penny for your thoughts, Lionel, as the game goes into extra-time and then Argentina lose on penalties. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, as Scaloni knows only too well, having been in Molina’s right-back position for West Ham in the 2006 FA Cup Final against Liverpool.
Steven Gerrard’s stunning equaliser in the dying moments of what is still one of the best FA Cup Finals in recent memory was a personal horror story for the man who can become a national treasure on Sunday. It was Scaloni who kicked the ball out when Liverpool’s Djibril Cisse went down with cramp in the dying seconds, and it was he who, when the game re-started, shanked his clearance to the ailing Gerrard. Scaloni’s West Ham team-mate on that day, Dean Ashton, bears no grudges, though.
“It would have been better if he had launched it right up the other end of the pitch to Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina, but at the same time no one expected Gerrard to score from where he was,” says Ashton. “It was one of those freak, unique goals, although I’m pretty sure that if you asked West Ham fans what they thought of Lionel Scaloni, they would have some choice words in reply!
“It’s not fair, though, to put it all on Lionel. He still cleared the ball far enough away from our goal that we should have been able to deal with it. What is also frequently forgotten is the ball he played in for Jamie Carragher’s own-goal earlier in the game, which was at pace and in exactly the right channel. I certainly didn’t have any animosity towards him at the time. It was just one of those things.”
Scaloni joined West Ham on a six-month loan deal from Deportivo La Coruna in January 2006. He made 17 appearances for the Hammers under Alan Pardew, who said recently in an interview with the Telegraph: “He cost me a Cup Final winners’ medal and I can never forgive him! So many West Ham fans have come up to me over the years and said, ‘Oh my god, that throw in! What was he thinking?’ If only he had just done something different.”
Ashton said: “He was popular, and the players loved the fact that he threw himself into our culture straight away. He spoke reasonable English, could communicate with the boys and we had such a good group at that time — such a British-based group — that you needed to be that way to fit in quickly.
“From what I remember of him, he’s not the type of person who would be ridiculously ‘shouty’, he seems quite calm and measured on the sidelines. Maybe that is what was needed by Argentina, and what an opportunity now for him to write his name in the history books.”
