World Cup 2018: If Argentina can overcome their seemingly impossible flaws and win the whole thing, it will be Hollywood worthy

Having overcome a complete meltdown, are Argentina fully back on track or merely clinging on for dear life?

“Now a new movie begins,” said Gabriel Mercado, partly excited but mainly relieved as he looked ahead to a future Argentina mightn't have had.

Argentina had gone from comedy to tragedy to an outright thriller in their three group games in Russia but now only knockout fixtures remain, all margin for error is gone and for a team that has shown such a propensity for making them, that is worrisome.

For now, though, the mood is so jubilant it does not matter. The win over Nigeria did not bring the greatest performance but only the result mattered. The display was better - it would have been hard to be worse than the nadir of Croatia - but Argentina truly believed they would do it and in the end they did, magnificently, bravely and emphatically through Marcos Rojo’s late, late show.

As the ball barrelled in from Rojo’s weaker foot, a sure shank that led to Argentina’s redemption, Lionel Messi hopped on board the red express. Rojo, bursting with adrenaline, carried Messi all the way to the corner of the pitch as Argentina’s players and substitutes hurtled at full speed to join.

For all the division of the past week, so painstakingly detailed on these pages , this was a moment of unity. They will need much more than that when they face France.

As posed by Jonathan Liew on the IndyFootball podcast when analysing this game , the pertinent question may be this: at this moment, which is more significant - that they have so many flaws or that they overcame them?

The argument on one side is that the flaws are actual human beings; players that simply aren’t good enough and who are under the orders of a coach who has shown no capacity during this tournament to elevate their talents and who has almost certainly lost all of their faith . That is nigh-on impossible to fix. Their appalling build-up to the tournament itself; political in-fighting and cancelled friendlies, come from a Football Association that is terribly run, a huge handicap when your rivals are backed by federations with huge resources and who put attention into every detail to improve your chances of glory.

If Argentina's World Cup became a movie, Lionel Messi's goal would be on the trailer (Getty)

And yet their drive, their ability to pull out that winning goal when they had played so poorly and their ultimate magic trick - a crucial, brilliant goal that wasn’t either made or scored by Messi - suggests there’s a chance. Messi himself being on the pitch multiplies that. They have more time now to work out who should play and where, the sort of stuff that should be really elemental but for a team that virtually started from scratch last Friday morning this new start, this new movie, is still embryonic and things are yet to click into place.

They either won’t stay in the tournament long enough for that to happen or the sparks will fly. This doesn’t have the look of a team that can be a steamroller in the way that Spain, Brazil or Germany could if they got their act together but it does have enough components to keep you interested and the individual quality to beat any team in Russia.

A happy ending to this new movie seems unlikely but that is always the way. The greatest highs come from experiencing the darkest lows, and if Argentina can win the World Cup from here, with everything that has happened and so beset by obvious flaws, then Hollywood really will come calling.