He waited until Argentina needed him most.
With scores tied at 1-1 and Switzerland retreating deeper by the minute in extra time, Julian Alvarez collected the ball just outside the penalty area, shifted it onto his right foot and, with barely any backlift, bent a sublime curler beyond Gregor Kobel into the far corner. It was the kind of finish that belongs in World Cup montages — precise, composed and almost understated. There was no wild celebration, only clenched fists and teammates engulfing the man who has quietly become Argentina’s most reliable big-game scorer as they won 3-1 to set-up a semifinal date with England.
Long before he was deciding World Cup quarter-finals, however, Alvarez was simply La Arana — the Spider.
The nickname came not from a marketing campaign or a comic-book obsession but from the dusty football grounds of Calchin, a farming town of barely 2,500 people in Cordoba province. As a child, opponents joked that the skinny forward seemed to have more than two legs. Every loose ball somehow found its way back to him. “I remember one goal, when he was about eight or nine, when he beat four or five rivals and scored a rabona goal,” his first coach Rafael Varas told the Manchester City website of the cross-legged strike. “That’s when I realised we had a different kind of player, who could be a world star.”
His teammates recalled they felt like he has ‘six or seven legs’, like a spider. The nickname stuck, and today every goal is followed by his now-familiar Spiderman celebration – by spreading his arms wide and extending his thumb, forefinger and little finger like Spiderman.