“If they had sent Messi off, and he really deserved to be sent off, then there would have been nothing. This hat trick, all these records. What would the world talk about? How would you compare him to Ronaldo? On the one hand, the referee actually acted badly. On the other hand, if he had shown the red card, he would have deprived the World Cup of much. If he had been expelled, the whole world would have hated it", said Mor on the "Match TV" broadcast. The incident occurred 31 minutes into the game. Messi hit Algerian defender Aïssa Mandi's shin from behind, knocking his opponent down, but the match referee, Szymon Marciniak, didn't even show the Argentine a yellow card, and the VAR didn't intervene. In this game, Messi scored a hat-trick.