Argentina gets gold for Olympic footy

Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero celebrate with their gold medals in Beijing

Argentina overcame a resilient Nigerian side to defend their title as Olympic football champions. Of course, Olympic football finals is miles away from the quality in the World Cup because teams are only allowed to field under-23 players and one or two senior ones. This Olympic Argentina side is remarkable in that almost half of its first-eleven squad contains literally famous big names despite being an Olympic side. They include Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Javier Mascherano, Riquelme, Fernando Gago. Not only that, their most memorable performance has got to be the one when they swept Brazil 3-0 aside in the semis. Messi (born in 1987) and Aguero (born in 1988) are only 1 or 2 years older than me and they are already so talented plus are consistently starting in the first eleven for their clubs! Messi especially is in the process of becoming a worldwide phenomenal and the entire stadium literally roared when his name was called out.

It was an extremely hot day to play footy and the temperature was between 32 degrees to a whopping 42! It's bad to play 6 games in 2 weeks and to play your final at 12 in the afternoon is just stretching the limits. No surprise as the players were forced to take water breaks. The whole game was at walking pace. Argentina's goal started from a superb pin-point pass from Messi which sliced through the centre. Di Maria broke through the defence in the counter-attack and intelligent stuff from him as he lobs the off the goalkeeper into the net. Because of the crazy weather, Argentina was just contented to keep the ball and park bus while the Nigerians used every ounce of their tremendous strength to break down the Argentians. In the end, Messi and Co triumph and Mascherano would definitely be delighted to have two Gold Olympics medals, one from Athens and now in Beijing.