EPIC Can Be Unfair

There was a moment, somewhere in the final eleven minutes of Argentina's astonishing comeback against Egypt, when football once again revealed one of life's most uncomfortable truths: The world is not always fair. Yet unfairness alone does not explain success.

Picture courtesy Getty Images

For more than eighty minutes, Egypt had written the perfect script.

Not the script of giants. Not the script of favourites. The script of dreamers.

They ran harder. Defended deeper. Suffered more. Every tackle carried the urgency of a nation that knew opportunities like this do not come often. Every clearance felt like a small act of resistance against football's established order.

Across the pitch stood Argentina - world champions, football royalty, a team that carries the weight of history every time it steps onto the field. In my home state of Kerala, World Cups often feel like a month-long celebration of Argentina. Entire neighbourhoods become blue and white. Flags appear on rooftops. Friendships are temporarily divided between Brazil and Argentina. Football becomes religion.

Yet for most of this match, history seemed irrelevant.

Egypt carried hope.And hope was winning.

The stadium could sense it. Viewers around the world could sense it. Football loves its underdogs because most of us see ourselves in them. We are rarely the strongest, richest, most connected or most talented person in the room. We spend our lives trying to overcome advantages we do not possess.That is why we cheer for teams like Egypt.

Their struggle feels familiar.And for more than eighty minutes, Egypt were magnificent..then football did what football often does.

It turned. A goal. Then another.

Suddenly in 10 mins, momentum,  that invisible force that no statistician can fully measure, changed sides. The certainty of an Egyptian victory slowly dissolved into anxiety. The confidence that had carried them for eighty minutes began to wobble.

And then came the moments that will be debated for years.

The fouls.The VAR decisions.The incidents that supporters will replay endlessly, each convinced that justice was either served or denied.

Egypt thought they had scored what would have been their third goal. VAR intervened and the goal was disallowed after a foul was identified earlier in the attacking phase. Under FIFA's Attacking Possession Phase rule, VAR was technically entitled to review the incident. Most refereeing experts agree that the protocol itself was followed correctly.

The debate lies elsewhere. Was the contact significant enough to be called a foul?

Some analysts believe it was.

Others argue it was minimal contact, the sort routinely seen in elite football.

Then came the other incident.

Just before Argentina's winning goal, Egypt argued that Mohamed Salah was fouled during the turnover that led to Argentina's attack. This time, neither the referee nor VAR intervened.

Again, experts remain divided.

Some believe a foul should have been awarded.

Others view it as a fair challenge.

The issue, at least from Egypt's perspective, is not necessarily that one decision was right and the other wrong. It is that two similar levels of contact appeared to be judged differently.

That perception of inconsistency is what has fuelled the controversy.

And honestly, I understand it.

Even many Argentina supporters can acknowledge that Egypt have reasons to feel aggrieved.

If the same decisions had happened in reverse, the outrage would simply have come from the other side.

Because football, like life, rarely offers the clean morality of a novel.

There is no referee for existence.

No VAR for missed opportunities.

No committee reviews why one entrepreneur received funding while another, equally deserving, did not. No appeal process exists for the promotion that went elsewhere, the contract that never arrived, the deal that fell through, or the timing that worked perfectly for someone else and not for you.

We prefer stories where virtue is rewarded.

Reality prefers complexity.

Perhaps that is why sport captivates us so deeply. It compresses life's randomness into a few dramatic hours.

A whistle changes a tournament.

A moment changes a legacy.

Years of preparation can be overturned by seconds.

And yet, if we zoom out from the controversy and look at the match as a whole, another truth emerges.

Argentina still had to score three goals in eleven minutes.

No referee scored those goals.

No VAR created that pressure.

No controversial decision forced Egypt to concede.

At some point, we have to acknowledge what Argentina achieved.

Because coming back from 2-0 down with eleven minutes remaining against a disciplined, highly motivated opponent is not luck.

It is resilience. It is belief. It is persistence.

It is the refusal to accept defeat.

Perhaps Egypt's greatest mistake was not the referee's decision. Perhaps it was allowing the emotional weight of those moments to affect them. For eighty minutes they were composed. In the final moments, they looked distracted, frustrated and suddenly vulnerable.

Sport can be cruel that way.

You can spend eighty minutes doing everything right and lose control for eight.

And sometimes that is enough. This is not unique to football. I've seen it in life.

A startup executes brilliantly for years but loses focus during a critical phase.

A market leader becomes complacent just when a challenger discovers momentum.

A company that looked beaten finds one breakthrough and suddenly changes the entire game.

From a distance, people call it luck.

Up close, it is usually a combination of resilience, timing, preparation, belief and opportunity colliding at exactly the right moment.

That doesn't mean luck doesn't matter. It does.

Life is full of advantages, disadvantages, fortunate breaks and unfortunate setbacks.

Egypt may genuinely have been unfortunate yesterday.

They played magnificently.

They may also have been victims of inconsistent officiating.

Those two statements can coexist.

But another statement is also true.

Argentina's victory was not a fluke.

Champions are rarely built on talent alone. They are built on the ability to remain alive long enough for momentum to arrive. They keep pushing when others start protecting. They continue attacking when others begin celebrating too early.

History often belongs to those who stay in the fight long enough for fortune to notice them.

That feels unfair.

Because sometimes it is.

But fairness has never been the currency of either football or life.

Results are. Meaning is. Resilience is.

The scoreboard will forever say Argentina 3, Egypt 2.

History is ruthless that way.

Yet beneath the result lies a deeper story.

A story about effort without guarantees.

About courage without certainty.

About excellence without reward.

And about the extraordinary power of persistence.

Egypt won admiration.

Argentina won the match.

Both achieved something memorable.

My personal view?

From a macro perspective, Egypt can legitimately feel unfortunate. Looking only at the controversial moments, the result may feel unfair.

But if you look deeper, Argentina's victory was earned.

Sometimes you spend most of the game losing.

Sometimes you spend most of your career behind.

Sometimes your competitor appears to have all the momentum.

Then something changes.

You find belief.

You raise your level.

Your opponent loses focus.

The opportunity appears.

And you seize it.

That doesn't make your victory unfair.

It makes it epic.

And sometimes, epic can be unfair.