Saudi Arabia star told Messi 'you will NOT win' after going 2-1 up vs Argentina

Saudi Arabia star Ali Al-Bulayhi's told Lionel Messi 'you will not win' 40 minutes before their shock win against Argentina was confirmed, it was revealed.

The Middle Eastern nation triumphed 2-1 against Argentina in one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history on Tuesday afternoon.

Messi opened the scoring but Saleh Al-Shehri equalised, and when Salem Al-Dawsari gave his side a surprise lead five minutes later, Al-Bulayhi had a confident message for the opposition captain.

After the 53rd-minute goal, instead of celebrating with his team-mates, Al-Bulayhi raced over to a surprised Messi, slapping him heartily on the back to get his attention.

As he admitted after the match, he then said 'You will not win, you will not win!' - a gutsy thing to say with 35 minutes plus a lengthy period of added time left to play, though his cheeky prediction was later proved correct.

Messi looked stunned as Al-Bulayhi grabbed his own shirt to symbolise his pride in his country, before half-smiling as he turned away.

Argentina stars Papu Gomez and Lautaro Martinez then, seeing the altercation, raced over to push the 33-year-old Al-Hilal centre back away from their team-mate.

Messi said after the match: 'We knew that (Saudi) Arabia is a team with good players, that moves the ball well and that advances the line a lot. We work on it, but we speed up a bit.

'There are no excuses. We are going to be more united than ever. This group is strong and they have shown it. It is a situation that we did not have to go through in a long time. Now we have to show that this is a real group.

'It's a very hard blow for everyone, we didn't expect to start like this. Everything happens for a reason.

'We have to prepare for what's coming, we have to win or win and it depends on us. We have to go back to the base of who we are. We have to think about what's to come.'