Messi’s Argentina vs Cape Verde and a Historic Egypt-Australia Clash Friday

MIAMI — The 2026 World Cup’s round of 32 reaches its final day Friday, with three matches completing the first knockout stage of an expanded 48-team tournament that has already produced its share of upsets, records and memorable moments. The headliner is unmistakably the late-afternoon showdown in Miami, where reigning champion Argentina and the record-setting Lionel Messi face a Cape Verde side that has captivated fans worldwide with one of the most improbable group stage runs in recent tournament history.

But Friday’s card begins in Dallas at 2 p.m. ET, where Australia takes on Egypt in a match carrying genuine historical weight for both sides. Neither nation has ever won a World Cup knockout match, making the Dallas opener a first for one of them regardless of what happens. Australia is playing in just its third-ever knockout round, having lost twice in agonizing fashion, once to Italy in 2006 on a stoppage-time winner and once to Argentina in 2022. Egypt’s appearance in the knockout stage is only the second in its World Cup history, with the first coming in 1934 under a single-elimination format with no group stage whatsoever.

Egypt enters the match with significant injury uncertainty surrounding its most important player. Captain and all-time leading scorer Mohamed Salah was forced off in the 57th minute of Egypt’s group stage finale against Iran with a hamstring strain. Coach Hossam Hassan has expressed optimism about Salah’s availability, but without the former Liverpool forward, Egypt’s offense has little of the individual quality needed to break down a resolute Australian defensive shape. Compounding the concern, left-back Ahmed Fatouh and central defender Mohamed Abdelmonem are both listed as doubtful, leaving Egypt potentially depleted across multiple positions of the backline.

Australia under coach Tony Popovic has not been a high-scoring team through the group stage. The Socceroos scored twice in their opening 2-0 win over Türkiye but were then shut out in a 2-0 loss to the United States and earned a 0-0 draw against Paraguay without finding the net. That scoring drought reflects a team comfortable playing deep and looking to capitalize on counter-attacking opportunities rather than imposing possession-based football on opponents, a style that could prove well-suited to navigating Egypt’s injury-diminished lineup if the Australians can keep things tight defensively.

One of the match’s defining storylines involves who is standing in goal for Australia. Shortly before the tournament’s first match, coach Popovic made the surprising call to bench veteran captain Matthew Ryan in favor of Patrick Beach, a largely inexperienced goalkeeper who plays domestically for Melbourne City and had only five international caps entering the tournament. Beach delivered a stunning performance in the Türkiye victory and added a second clean sheet against Paraguay, quickly justifying the unconventional selection. He is likely to be tested early and often if Salah plays, and his form on the day may ultimately determine the outcome.

The second match, in Miami at 6 p.m. ET, frames itself as the round’s most one-sided matchup on paper and also its most narratively compelling underdog story. Cape Verde, representing an archipelago nation of just 525,000 people off the west coast of Africa, advanced to the knockout stage without losing a single group stage match. The Blue Sharks drew 0-0 with Spain, 2-2 with Uruguay and 0-0 with Saudi Arabia, finishing second in their group. Their opening stalemate against Spain, still one of the tournament’s most technically refined sides, announced Cape Verde as a team organized far beyond expectations, built around a disciplined 4-5-1 formation that sits deep and offers opponents almost no space between the lines.

Central to Cape Verde’s run has been 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha, who has been one of the tournament’s most celebrated individual performers, particularly during the Spain match, where his command of the penalty area and shot-stopping quality kept the scoreline level against one of the world’s leading attacking lineups. At 40, Vozinha is a story in himself, a late-career achievement that connects Cape Verde’s remarkable group stage to the personal arc of an individual who was never expected to be here.

Against Argentina, however, Cape Verde faces a different order of challenge than anything the group stage produced. La Albiceleste has won all three of its group stage games by multi-goal margins and have played with the self-assurance of a team operating with a clear sense of purpose. They have won their last 10 competitive matches and enter Friday as the clearest favorite of any remaining team in the tournament, a status reflected in betting markets where Argentina sit at odds as heavy as negative 694.

The player around whom everything revolves is Messi, a point that requires no elaboration yet deserves acknowledgment given what the 39-year-old has already produced in this tournament. He has scored in every group match, co-leads the tournament with six goals alongside France’s Kylian Mbappé and has now scored 19 career World Cup goals, the most in the history of the men’s game, a record he set earlier at this tournament. The Blue Sharks kept Spain scoreless over 90 minutes, an achievement of genuine defensive organization and collective discipline, but Argentina’s attack beyond Messi, including the striker partnership with Lautaro Martínez and the creative supporting cast across the front line, presents a dimension of danger Spain’s group stage lineup did not.

A cloud has settled over the Cape Verde camp this week, however. Captain Ryan Mendes is under a criminal investigation in New Zealand following allegations that he raped a woman in March. How the team’s federation and coaching staff have addressed the matter internally has not been fully disclosed publicly, though the news adds an uncomfortable dimension to what had been a purely joyful story for a nation experiencing its first-ever World Cup knockout appearance.

Friday’s final match, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City at 9:30 p.m. ET, features Colombia against Ghana, with the South American side entering as the clear favorite against a Ghanaian team that has relied on deep defensive structure and a deliberate, disciplined game management style to advance from what was widely viewed as a difficult group. Colombia’s emerging quality up front makes them the likely victor in what is expected to be a tactically cautious contest.