As the final whistle blew in New Jersey, a few Argentina players – including Lionel Messi – slumped to the turf.<\/p>\n
Others stood there motionless as Spain’s players raced across the pitch in jubilation.<\/p>\n
Rodri, who had been substituted in extra-time, ran over from the dugout to join his team-mates. <\/p>\n
As the Manchester City midfielder went past Nahuel Molina, the Argentina defender appeared to punch Rodri on the arm or stomach. <\/p>\n
This was the fuse which ignited the trouble.<\/p>\n
Rodri confronted Molina, but it was the Argentina player who thrust forward in an aggressive manner. <\/p>\n
Garcia ran over to back up his team-mate at which point Paredes got involved too, jabbing Garcia in the throat.<\/p>\n
Unused substitute Gavi tried to intervene, only to be forced to the ground by Thiago Almada.<\/p>\n
Paredes then pushed Gavi to the floor by putting his hand in the Spaniard’s face. <\/p>\n
Argentina assistant coach Roberto Ayala then looked to be holding Garcia around the throat. He then appeared to strike Spain midfielder Dani Olmo.<\/p>\n
“Paredes threw two or three haymakers into someone’s face. He went for them,” Alan Shearer said on BBC One’s coverage. “There is no place or space for that.<\/p>\n
“We know how much it means to them and we know how much it hurts to lose, but there is a way to lose. Too many times we have seen that from Argentina. The reaction after the final whistle is terrible.”<\/p>\n
Joe Hart added: “The game’s done, they can have absolutely no complaints about what happened today. Disgusting behaviour.”<\/p>\n
But Argentina boss Lionel Scaloni, who had attempted to calm down the situation, appeared to play down the incidents in his post-match interview.<\/p>\n
“We are gracious in victory, and we must be gracious in defeat,” he said. “Today, we are showing that we know how to lose.<\/p>\n
“We lost the match, and we accept it, but that doesn’t mean we stop living or forget everything we did to get here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the final whistle blew in New Jersey, a few Argentina players – including Lionel Messi – slumped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-812812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}