Argentina Inspects Pickford’s Water Bottle After Beating England Anyway

Argentina beat England 2-1 in Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal without a single penalty kick, and its players still went hunting for Jordan Pickford’s water bottle. Lautaro Martínez’s header two minutes into stoppage time settled it, sending the defending champions through to Sunday’s final. Moments later, cameras caught Lionel Messi and his teammates passing around the England goalkeeper’s bottle, the same one Pickford has covered in handwritten penalty notes since 2018.

The scene was comic, not competitive. It also shows how far shootout scouting has grown, elaborate enough to draw a curious crowd even when nobody actually needed the data.

Argentina Checks the Bottle Anyway

England led through Anthony Gordon before Enzo Fernández equalized in the 86th minute. Two minutes into stoppage time, Martínez rose to head in the winner, closing out the win at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, rebranded Atlanta Stadium for the tournament and holding 68,239 fans for the night.

As Argentina’s players celebrated on the pitch, a member of the coaching staff carried Pickford’s bottle over to show Messi, who had missed two penalties earlier in the tournament, against Austria and Egypt. The staff member then brought it to Fernández, the Chelsea midfielder, who appeared to find his own name and preferred side written on the label and broke into laughter.

A clip showing Messi’s reaction caught on camera spread across football social media within the hour. It was Messi’s first competitive match against England in 21 years of international football. Argentina made sure it ended with a laugh at his rival goalkeeper’s expense instead of a shootout.

What’s Actually Taped to Pickford’s Bottle?

Pickford’s bottle carries a handwritten scouting report on whatever opponent he is about to face. It lists each taker’s preferred side, shot height and tendencies under pressure, compiled by England’s analysis staff and wrapped around the bottle like a label meant for his eyes only.

• Preferred side – which way a taker leans, left, right or down the middle
• Shot height – whether he tends to go low or lift the ball
• Hesitation cues – whether a taker waits out the goalkeeper’s dive
• Fake potential – whether he has a history of disguising his run up

The system had its most famous moment at Euro 2024, when England beat Switzerland on penalties in the quarterfinal. Pickford’s bottle flagged Manuel Akanji, Switzerland’s captain and second taker, to dive left, and he did exactly that to keep the effort out. Gareth Southgate, England’s manager at the time, later said of the process behind it, “We’ve been in four shootouts and won three, and got absolutely crucified for the one we lost.” The same daily penalty rehearsals in England’s camp that produced that save are still part of the setup under Thomas Tuchel.

The Save That Built the Legend

The habit traces back to Moscow in 2018. Pickford saved Carlos Bacca’s spot kick in the round of 16 against Colombia, and Eric Dier scored the winning penalty, giving England their first World Cup shootout victory. Before that night, England had lost three straight World Cup shootouts: to West Germany in the 1990 semifinal, to Argentina in the 1998 last 16, and to Portugal in the 2006 quarterfinal.

That 1998 defeat is the last time these two nations met in a World Cup shootout. This year they skipped the drama entirely, though the bottle still made the trip to Atlanta.

Do the Notes Actually Work?

Penalty saves are rare no matter how good the scouting is. Across 39 World Cup shootouts and 360 spot kicks since the format arrived in 1982, roughly seven in ten penalties go in, and a handful of goalkeepers account for most of the saves that break that pattern.

Direction matters more than any single keeper’s memory. Historic data shows kicks placed to the right score 73% of the time, with 71% going in when a taker picks the left post, against just 58% for shots hit down the middle. Central kicks are actually saved less often, but 24% miss the target entirely, compared with 7% for shots aimed at either post. Teams that shoot first in a World Cup shootout have fared worse lately too. Opta’s research shows nine of the last eleven first shooting sides have lost the shootout that followed. Germany, meanwhile, have never lost a World Cup shootout in four attempts, a record built on drilled routine rather than any single trick.

The Shootout Argentina Never Needed

None of that mattered on Wednesday. Gordon’s opener held until the 86th minute, when Fernández’s equalizer forced the game into its final stretch. Martínez’s header came before extra time could even start, closing the door on penalties before Pickford’s bottle left his pocket.

Gary Lineker, the former England striker, had warned about the risk of the tactic back at Euro 2024.

One player is going to look at that bottle.

Lineker said it on the Rest Is Football podcast, and two years later, an entire dugout did exactly that, just not for the reason he meant. Nobody needed to dive the right way. They just wanted to see the homework.

A Data Arms Race Bigger Than One Bottle

This tournament’s expanded 48 team format, with an extra knockout round bolted on, mathematically produces more matches that could end from twelve yards, and it has already strained officiating resources all summer. More shootouts mean more scouting, more water bottles, and more moments like Wednesday’s.

It also means more money watching. Trading around the England-Argentina semifinal pushed billions in crypto prediction market volume, with fan tokens tied to both countries surging as bettors priced in exactly the kind of late-goal, no-shootout outcome that made Pickford’s notes irrelevant. Betting platforms had been quoting live goal scorer odds on the match all week, on top of the supercomputer models broadcasters lean on to forecast everything from the final score to who takes a sixth penalty in sudden death.

Argentina now moves on to face Spain, winners of the other semifinal, in Sunday’s final. Pickford’s water bottle, notes and all, goes home with England instead, never tested in a shootout all tournament.