Diego Maradona ‘fine’ after being seen by doctor during World Cup match

Argentina face France in the last-16 after finishing second in the group, while Croatia take on Group C runners-up Denmark.

Messi leads Argentina into a must-win Tuesday game against Nigeria at St. Petersburg Stadium, where the African team would advance out of Group D with a victory.

At the drama played out in Saint Petersburg, 1,500 kilometres (950 miles) away in Rostov-on-Don, Croatia snuffed out the challenge of Iceland, scoring late through Ivan Perisic to seal a 2-1 win and complete a flawless group stage.

“We knew God was with us and wasn’t going to let us go out”.

Hallgrimsson cut his teeth in worldwide management as assistant to Swede Lars Lagerback, who steered Iceland to the Euro 2016 finals, where they beat England in the last 16 but fell to host nation France at the quarter-final stage.

Inter Milan’s Ivan Perisic scored a 90th-minute victor after Gylfi Sigurdsson’s penalty had cancelled out Milan Badelj’s opener early in the second half. Messi who was undoubtedly the biggest player in the match put Argentina in front with a brilliant goal with his right foot.

Maradona was an animated, and sometimes asleep, figure in the stands through-out the game and celebrate both of Argentina’s precious goals with gusto. Otherwise we’ll suffer because we have the best player in the world and the other players need to benefit from that.

“I’m trying to avoid this question, we’ll take 10 days then we can decide what will be in future”.

Can Lionel Messi go on and help his team progress to the latter stages of the tournament?

“Everybody loves him”, Rohr said. “We also worked on defending set-pieces because it had been a problem to us”, he added.

Earlier, he was in tears when the score was 1-1, which would have resulted in Argentina’s elimination.

The Barcelona striker, whose hint of a smile during the pre-match anthems was a stark contrast to his pained expression prior to the 3-0 defeat by Croatia, produced a superb first-half performance.

He has been a notable presence at all of his country’s matches at this year’s World Cup in Russian Federation.

On his part, another fan, 14-year-old Marcus, who is coming for his second World Cup, said he thinks Argentina will win. The entire nation has been following the squad, which is known at home as “Our Boys”.

Asked by Argentine media how he felt personally, Messi, who turned 31 this week, replied: “I’m good. The most significant element was the bravery with which they played; there was a lot of courage”. “We have showed we belong”, he said.