When the Game Does Not End at the Final Whistle

Somewhere amid the controversy and the chaos, there is the germ of a paradox. Every philosophical quandary requires a scenario, and this is a good one: On Wednesday, the opening day of the men’s soccer tournament at the Paris Olympics, Cristian Medina scored a late — 106th-minute late — equalizer to help Argentina salvage a point against Morocco.

The goal prompted a barrage of objects to rain down on the field from the stands, followed by a smattering of fans. In the interests of safety, the referee called the players off the field. The game, however, had not ended; it had merely paused. An hour later, when the stadium had been cleared of the general public, play resumed. Javier Mascherano, Argentina’s coach, called it a “circus.”

The game continued with the news that Medina’s goal, which involved around a dozen blocks and saves and ricochets, had been rescinded by the video assistant referee. There had been an Argentine offside in the comic scramble beforehand. Morocco played out the final few minutes, the stadium now empty, and won, 2-1. Officially, that is how the game finished.

But to those watching — the fans in the stadium, who had experienced the goal but left before discovering that it did not count, and the fans following along at home, who might have switched off the game, assuming that it had ended — what was the score?

What had actually happened? Is it what they witnessed, what they saw with their own eyes, what they felt? Or is it what they were told, some time later, after some deus ex machina had intervened in human affairs? Every philosophical quandary needs a name, and this offers a good one, too: We can call it Mascherano’s Paradox.

The sensation, of course, will be familiar. The idea that truth is a slippery, malleable concept is something that most soccer fans internalized long ago. Managers had been using news conferences to reel off “alternative facts” — usually pertaining to the competence of various officials — years before the Trump aide Kellyanne Conway introduced the concept to a broader audience.