Argentina-Morocco Olympic Men's Soccer Ends in Chaos After Lengthy Delay, VAR Ruling

Patrick Andres | Jul 24, 2024

Cristian Medina of Argentina celebrates scoring his team's second goal during the Men's group B match between Argentina and Morocco during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard on July 24, 2024 in Saint-Etienne, France. / Tullio M. Puglia/Getty Images

The first competition of the Paris Olympics was one to remember—and not exactly for good reason.

Though the opening ceremony is Friday, Argentina and Morocco had the honors of kicking off the Games with a men's soccer match Wednesday. For 90 minutes, the game was a fairly conventional one that the Moroccans led 2–1. Then, everything went haywire.

First, the game's referees put an astounding 15 minutes of stoppage time on the clock—allowing the Argentinians to apparently tie the game 2–2 at the death. Vehement protests from Morocco's fans led the referees to suspend the game after 16 minutes of stoppage time.

During the lengthy stoppage—which lasted in excess of an hour and a half—the officials went to video review and ruled Argentina midfielder Cristian Medina's equalizer offside.

ARGENTINE TV has just released these images. Amione in an offside position when Otamendi makes the first point of contact on his shot.

This is straight from VAR, I would imagine world feed. pic.twitter.com/RQ25BWpayE

— Nico Cantor (@Nicocantor1) July 24, 2024

Finally, the game was re-started without fans and the Moroccans finished out the victory.

Got all that?

INCREDIBLE scenes at #Paris2024 Olympics soccer.

▶️ Morocco led Argentina 2-1
▶️ 15 minutes added
▶️ Argentina equalise 90+16
▶️ Morocco fans protest + game suspended
▶️ 90 mins later, goal ruled out by VAR for offside
▶️ Game just resumed for final 3 mins
▶️ FT 2-1 Morocco

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonESPN) July 24, 2024

This is only day one of the competition, if you can believe it. As is often the case when the entire world sports community gets together, there figures to be a lot of chicanery still to come.