Every World Cup features a team of no-hopers who through sheer force of will become underdogs for a few weeks, attracting the attention of hardcore fans and normies alike: South Africa 2010 had New Zealand, the only team to end the tournament undefeated, even if they didn’t actually get out of the group stage and 2014 had Costa Rica who topped a group that also included Italy, England and Uruguay. Quite often, these teams are flukes who either produce a one-and-done miracle performance and only qualify again decades later or immediately return to the bottom of the barrel from whence they came.

At Euro 2016, this team was Iceland. With roughly the same population as Cardiff, a terrain that is almost entirely absent of grass, the idea that they could even produce enough players to fill a football team was so ludicrous that the build-up to their first-ever appearance at an international tournament, in which it was repeatedly stated that there was a concerted effort from the government to promote the game with indoor pitches and funded training schemes, was treated as a bit of a sideshow to the real teams. Then they showed up and reached the quarterfinals by beating England in the Round of 16.

Overnight cult favorites mostly thanks to their fun fanbase and part-time players, Iceland were only expected to show their faces again in the upcoming, expanded Euro 2020. But then they qualified for the World Cup in Russia. And then they ended up in Group D and, to Argentina’s horror, proved that they’re the real deal.

Iceland should have been easy enough. On the one hand, a victory over them would be more convincing than beating, say, Saudi Arabia but on the other, their most famous player is Everton’s Gylfi Sigurdsson and their coach has a day job as a dentist. Argentina, on the other hand, have a who’s who of European playmakers: Sergio Aguero, Paulo Dybala, Gonzalo Higuain, Angel Di Maria, Nicolas Otamendi, Willy Caballero and, of course, Lionel Messi.

Twenty-four hours after Ronaldo stroked an invisible billygoat beard while celebrating the first goal of his sensational hat-trick against an on form world-class Spain side, the ying to his yang, Messi was expected to put his own marker down with Argentina. While the debate between Messi and CR7 over who is the real GOAT – greatest of all time – is still raging, the narrative is that all the Argentinian needs to do to secure the title is win a World Cup; not only because he’s won everything else, not only because Maradona did it with Argentina and not just because Ronaldo won the European championships with Portugal in 2016 but because the one enduring image of Messi from the 2014 World Cup is that of him clutching the Golden Ball trophy with a shell-shocked thousand-yard stare after an anonymous, losing performance against a magisterial Germany.

And yet, that’s better than the image that has already come to define his first game in this World Cup: Messi looking slightly stunned with his back to the camera while Iceland’s goalkeeper Hannes Halldorsson, a filmmaker by trade with credits for the Eurovision Song Contest to his name, comfortably saves his penalty kick. Besides for that moment, unless you treat the game like a real-life Where’s Wally?, Messi spent the rest of the 90 minutes practically invisible, as did most of the other star players name checked earlier – and not through a lack of trying.

Besides for Sergio Aguero, who seized a clearly mis-hit ball and smashed it into the back of the net from inside the box as if it were a simple reflex, Iceland had the whole Argentinian team on lockdown from start to finish. 

Argentina may have dominated the possession but Iceland made sure they had nowhere to go and nobody to pass it to: Maximiliano Meza and Javier Mascherano, two generations of midfield maestro, spent the game running into dead ends and having their passes picked out of the air by the opposition.

None of this is to say that Iceland were using negative tactics. It’s one thing to line up against a side that greatly outclasses you in all positions and spend the whole game closing them down in an attempt to not lose rather than win, but it’s another to play as Iceland did and went from a defensive to attacking swarm as soon as possession is gained. Skipper Aron Gunnarsson, in particular, managed to keep the exact same pace whether he was tracking back to stop Messi or moving forward to get the ball to Sigurdsson and Finnbogason, who scored to make it 1-1. 

The striker who plies his trade in the Bundesliga may have scored from an ugly deflection by Caballero, but he remained a threat throughout the game.

It may have ended as a draw, but Iceland definitely won the moral victory. Argentina, however, will have to take stock and maybe (hopefully) come to the conclusion that having one of the two best players in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t have a team set up that can facilitate him.

France should do similar, but probably won’t, as they did just about enough to scrape a win in Group C earlier in the day against Australia. Coming into the tournament with an embarrassment of riches – imagine having so many forwards to choose from that Karim Benzema has to stay at home – Les Bleus quickly looked like a plain old embarrassment as they struggled against the beloved Socceroos.

Were it not for the VAR system to confirm Antoine Griezmann deserved a penalty and to see Paul Pogba’s toe-poke crossed the line before it could be snatched back into play by keeper Mat Ryan, it’s likely the game’s only goal would have been Mile Jedinak’s penalty which came after Samuel Umtiti punched the ball out the way of a cross instead of heading it for no apparent reason.

The other Group C clash, Peru vs. Denmark, seemed to exist just for nostalgia. Remember when Peru made the quarterfinals at Mexico ’70? Remember when Denmark won Euro ’92? Well, they’re back – and not as good as you remember. Denmark won 1-0 but, besides for Christian Cueva’s blasting his penalty so far over the crossbar that the ball is reportedly set to dock with China's Tiangong-2 space station in several hours, the game was entirely forgettable.

Next up are Costa Rica vs. Serbia, Germany vs. Mexico and Brazil vs. Switzerland at 8 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. tomorrow Beijing time.