Nigeria v Argentina, 26 June 2018

Kick-off: 9.00pm local Nigeria v Argentina was Match 39 of the FIFA World Cup 2018 Refereeing team: Referee: Cüneyt Çakir (Turkey) Assistant Referee 1: Bahattin Duran (Turkey) Assistant Referee 2: Tarik Ongun (Turkey) Fourth Official: Björn Kuipers (Netherlands) Reserve AR: Sander van Roekel (Netherlands) VAR: Daniele Orsato (Italy) AVAR 1: Pawel Gil (Poland) AVAR 2: Pawel Sokolnicki (Poland) AVAR 3: Massimiliano Irrati (Italy) Nigeria would have qualified for the knock-out stages, rather than Argentina, had Marcos Rojo not scored his late winner. The Albicelestes had now qualified from the group stages for the fourth consecutive World Cup finals (2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018). Argentina had now won all five meetings with Nigeria in the World Cup finals and each by a single goal margin. Lionel Messi scored the 100th goal of this World Cup finals in the 100th different stadium where he has scored in his career for club and country in senior competitions. Lionel Messi became the third player to score for Argentina in three World Cup finals (2006, 2014 and 2018); also Diego Maradona (1982, 1986 and 1994) and Gabriel Batistuta (1994, 1998 and 2002). At an average of 30 years and 189 days, Argentina’s starting line-up in this game was their oldest-ever for a World Cup finals game. Argentina had now won all of their last 27 games at the World Cup finals when they were leading at half-time since a 4-2 defeat against Uruguay in the 1930 World Cup Final. They also remained unbeaten in their last 40 World Cup finals games when scoring the opening goal (won 35) since a 1-3 defeat against West Germany in 1958.