Argentina v Iceland, 16 June 2018

Kick-off: 4.00pm local Argentina v Iceland was Match 7 of the FIFA World Cup 2018 Referee: Szymon Marciniak (Poland) Assistant Referee 1: Pawel Sokolnicki (Poland) Assistant Referee 2: Tomasz Listkiewicz (Poland) Fourth Official: Wilmar Roldan (Colombia) Reserve AR: Alexander Guzman (Colombia) VAR: Mark Geiger (USA) This was Iceland's first-ever game at the World Cup finals. With 334,000 inhabitants, they became the smallest nation to ever reach the World Cup finals. Argentina failed to win their opening game at the World Cup finals for the first time since 1990 against Cameroon in Milan. They had won each of their last six World Cup openers. Argentina were competing at their 17th World Cup finals and their 12th participation in a row. Since 1978, only Germany (five) had reached a World Cup Final more often than Argentina (four). This game created a new record for the oldest combined average age of the starting line-ups for a World Cup finals game at 30 years and 213 days. The previous record was 30 years and 96 days for the Round of 16 game between Germany and Belgium in Chicago. Playing in his 144th game, Javier Mascherano became Argentina's most capped player. The previous record of 143 was held by Javier Zanetti. Hannes Halldórsson saved Lionel Messi's 64th minute penalty. He had now missed four of the last seven penalties he had taken for Argentina and Barcelona and became the third Argentine player to miss a penalty in the World Cup finals after Fernando Paternoster in 1930 against Mexico and Ariel Ortega in 2002 against Sweden.