A contested red card, more than any moment of individual brilliance, may have decided Argentina’s World Cup quarterfinal against Switzerland, leaving the Swiss to play extra time a man down before Julián Ãlvarez delivered the winner.
The dismissal hinged on a brand-new FIFA video review rule that swapped a yellow card between two players in real time, and it left one Swiss forward in tears while his coaching staff fumed on the touchline for the rest of the match.
Breel Embolo’s Red Card Reshapes the Match
Around the 70th minute, with the score tied 1-1, referee Joao Pinheiro initially booked Argentina’s Leandro Paredes for a challenge on Breel Embolo. A VAR review then applied FIFA’s new mistaken identity rule, determining Embolo had invited the contact, rescinding Paredes’ card and issuing a yellow to Embolo instead, according to the Independent‘s Jack Rathborn. Because Embolo had already been booked earlier in the match, the second yellow produced a red card, dropping Switzerland to 10 men with the score still level and roughly 20 minutes still to play.
Embolo was inconsolable afterward, with teammate Denis Zakaria pleading with Pinheiro on the field and Swiss captain Granit Xhaka confronting the referee again during the next hydration break. Former England goalkeeper Jobi McAnuff argued the call was defensible only in the strictest technical sense.
“To send him off in a game of this magnitude, it feels harsh,” McAnuff said on ITV Sport, as quoted by Yahoo Sports.
Playing a man up, Argentina still needed almost the full 30 minutes of extra time to break Switzerland’s resistance. In the 112th minute, Ãlvarez picked up the ball on the left flank, cut inside past a tiring backline and curled a shot past goalkeeper Gregor Kobel into the far post for the 2-1 winner that sent Lionel Scaloni’s side into the semifinals for a second straight tournament.
A Pattern of Contested Calls Has Followed Argentina
This marks at least the second time in the knockout rounds that officiating has directly shaped Argentina’s path to the final four. In the round of 16, Egypt led 2-0 before a VAR review disallowed a Mostafa Zico goal in the 62nd minute for a marginal foul on Lisandro MartÃnez well away from the play, according to ESPN. Egypt’s appeals for a penalty on Hamdy Fathy were waved away soon after, and Argentina scored the eventual winner through Enzo Fernández two minutes into stoppage time, part of a rally that erased a two-goal deficit and produced a 3-2 win.
Egypt coach Hossam Hassan suggested afterward that officials wanted to keep Lionel Messi’s run alive. “Perhaps they wanted Messi to stay in the running,” Hassan said. The Egyptian Football Association followed with a formal complaint against the match referees, saying it cannot remain silent regarding the refereeing decisions, per Al Jazeera. Several former players and broadcasters echoed the complaint, questioning why the review went so far back in the buildup while a similar incident near Mohamed Salah went unchecked.
Julián Ãlvarez, born January 31, 2000, in CalchÃn, Córdoba, has been part of both contested wins. The 26-year-old forward, who moved from Manchester City to Atlético Madrid in 2024 for a club-record fee reportedly worth $108.5 million, now has 15 goals in 52 caps for Argentina, a tally that includes a semifinal brace against Croatia at the 2022 World Cup. Switzerland, still seeking its first-ever World Cup semifinal, will head home wondering what might have been with 11 men on the field.
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