Argentina 3-2 Egypt: wild comeback sends Argentina to the quarters
Argentina were 2-0 down and scored three goals in the last 11 minutes to beat Egypt 3-2 and reach the World Cup 2026 quarter-finals.
Argentina pulled off one of the most dramatic comebacks of World Cup 2026 on Tuesday: 2-0 down to Egypt, they scored three goals in the final eleven minutes to win 3-2 and book a place in the quarter-finals. With an Egyptian upset looking certain, Cristian Romero, Lionel Messi and Enzo Fernández turned the game on its head.
How did Argentina overturn the 2-0?
Egypt built a two-goal lead in the second half and looked set for the tournament’s biggest shock. The turnaround began in the 79th minute, when Romero headed in a Messi cross; on 83, Messi himself levelled it; and deep in stoppage time, on 90+2, Enzo Fernández popped up for the 3-2. Eleven minutes that flipped near-certain elimination into an Argentine party.
Who do Argentina play in the quarter-finals?
The world champions join the last eight and will meet the winner of Switzerland-Colombia, the other tie closing out the round of 16, for a place in the semis. The road to the 19 July final keeps narrowing — and Messi’s Argentina, written off by many just minutes earlier, are still alive. We follow it round by round in our World Cup 2026 tracker, after setting up the Argentina-Egypt round-of-16 preview. Official results are on the FIFA site.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Hossein Zohrevand / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)