No, FIFA isn’t rigging the World Cup for Argentina and Lionel Messi

I know we live in a fragile day and age where running with the first sign of a conspiracy might be the easiest (read: laziest) thing to do, but we've really got to get a grip on how we're talking about Argentina in the men's World Cup.

Yes, this is the final international tournament in the legendary career of Lionel Messi, the greatest player in the history of soccer. Yes, reigning World Cup champion Argentina, Messi included or not, is a wildly popular team considered a traditional men's World Cup power. Yes, FIFA is a notoriously shady sporting organization (perhaps even the shadiest) that already has what sure looks like a massive scandal involving the United States men's national team at this same tournament. And yes, an underdog team like Egypt happened to get screwed by a broken Soccer Computer (a.k.a. Video Assistant Referee) in a Round of 16 match against Argentina.

But, and stick with me here, that doesn't mean FIFA is "rigging" the biggest sports tournament in the history of human civilization, just so the best player can ride off into the sunset with the first men's World Cup title repeat in six decades. That's such a huge leap to make. Yet, with Messi and Argentina waltzing into the World Cup semifinals of this coming week, that "rigged" conspiracy theory seems to be the prevailing sentiment in some of the darkest corners of the internet. So much so that Breel Embolo's egregious flopping for Switzerland is somehow a point of contention.

For anyone who actually believes FIFA is manipulating this World Cup for Argentina and Messi with an "invisible hand," uh, pardon my French: Do you know how utterly stupid you sound? How irrational? It boggles the mind.

Do you know how difficult something like this would be to execute on a logistical basis, even beyond the parameters of the five-week tournament? Do you understand the sheer financial and ideological commitment it would take from every person who is even tangentially associated with the FIFA organization, from the people in suits to the referees on the field, to execute such a Herculean task without getting caught? Rest assured, every soccer reporter on the planet would already be all over this story.

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Look, I have no doubt that FIFA would love for the last game of Messi's international career to take place in the World Cup Final, where there may be an audience of two billion people. Talk about a cash cow. And I know that FIFA, on a historical basis, doesn't have the best track record when it comes to questionable decision-making. It doesn't deserve implicit trust. We can acknowledge common ground there.

But the moment you start citing situations like a sloppy technological system overstepping an important boundary, in turn torpedoing Egypt as evidence of some grand plan, you've lost the plot. The moment you take umbrage with a dude getting ejected for blatantly flopping, you're ignoring that VAR's application has been torpedoing what feels like almost every team throughout the tournament. England, for one, might be in its third World Cup semifinal in the last three tournaments because no one thought to review a goal that hit a camera cable!

And guess what? That's just dumb luck, too, not anything malicious.

As a sports fan myself, I think I can safely say I know where much of this Argentina-FIFA conspiracy theory is also coming from. Few like to see a repeat champion. No one likes to see the said "arrogant" fans of that champion team happy (who are arrogant, because their team is good). The team's success probably even feels more grating when said team plays "unethically" (shorthand for "dirty" about the play style of a team you don't like). I will too readily admit that Argentina remains a worthy defending champion, but it has been getting by the skin of its teeth all the way to the final four of this World Cup.

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But none of these emotional sports fan conjectures are rational conclusions pointing to what would be one of the biggest scandals in sports history. They're just that: Emotional. They're assumptions. They are borne of people upset by an ongoing sports outcome, who assert that more powerful forces must be at play. This version of Argentina isn't the first to inspire such a thought process in sports, and it certainly won't be the last.

All I ask of people here is to accept sports outcomes they don't appreciate like adults. By that, I mean, of course, finding some other obscure reason to be a delightful hater on the internet without diving into an unfounded conspiracy theory. If we never took it further than good-old-fashioned hating, we'd all be so much happier.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: No, FIFA isn’t rigging the World Cup for Argentina and Lionel Messi