<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi, Luka Modric<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lionel Messi and Argentina will kick off the semifinals against Croatia today at the Lusail Stadium; 2 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n Bookmakers have tagged it as a \u201cMessiodric\u201d semifinal clash.<\/p>\n The 2022 World Cup semifinals are here. After a thrilling round of 16 and quarterfinals, we\u2019re into the business end of the tournament with four teams remaining.<\/p>\n There\u2019s plenty of star power, great matchups and top players who all have their eyes set on hoisting the trophy on December 18.<\/p>\n The action begins today with Croatia and Argentina kicking off, then defending champions France take on underdogs Morocco tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Have they met recently? <\/strong><\/p>\n This is their third meeting at a World Cup, but first in the knockouts. Argentina won the first meeting 1-0 in 1998\u2019s group stage, with Croatia winning 3-0 in 2018.<\/p>\n Argentina are -150 to advance from the semifinal, while Croatia are +450.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Why Croatia will reach the final<\/strong><\/p>\n Coach Zlatko Dalic spoke a lot in the aftermath of Croatia\u2019s quarterfinal victory over Brazil on penalties about their \u201cfighting spirit,\u201d and even though it\u2019s not something you can quantify with statistics or data, it will be the one thing that worries Argentina most.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Why Argentina will reach the final<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s nothing more, or less, than fate. This is almost certainly Lionel Messi\u2019s last shot at winning a World Cup, and he has dragged Argentina to this stage by his brilliance and force of personality. He isn\u2019t the player he was in his prime, with that electric burst of pace, but at 35, he has shown he is still capable of making the crucial difference.<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lionel Messi, Luka Modric \u00a0 Lionel Messi and Argentina will kick off the semifinals against Croatia today at the Lusail Stadium; 2 p.m. ET. Bookmakers have tagged it as a \u201cMessiodric\u201d semifinal clash. The 2022 World Cup semifinals are here. After a thrilling round of 16 and quarterfinals, we\u2019re into the business end of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1264630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[5312,1075,29244,2297,9512,525],"class_list":["post-1264629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-argentina","tag-battle","tag-croatia","tag-messi","tag-modric","tag-semis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}