Watching Argentina is a Workout
July 2026
I bought a Fitbit to keep track of my sleep and the occasional run. On July 7th, a couple of minutes after Messi equalised against Egypt in the World Cup round of 16, it buzzed on my wrist and congratulated me: it had automatically detected that I was exercising. I was not exercising. I was sitting on my sofa with a plate of snacks, and my heart had just gone from resting to 164 beats a minute without me moving an inch.
So I went and pulled the data. Here is the whole game, from kickoff to the final whistle. Every reading is a faint dot and the red line is the per-minute average. The vertical marks are the moments that mattered, with the goals drawn bolder. Hover or tap any of them to read what happened. The dimmed stretches are before kickoff, the two cooling breaks, half-time, and after the final whistle, when nothing was at stake and my heart rate shows it.
The part I did not expect: the three biggest spikes of the whole match are the three Argentina goals, the comeback. Every time we scored my heart jumped, and Messi’s equaliser took it to its peak of 164, while Egypt’s two goals barely move the line. Dread, it turns out, is quieter than joy.
Each dot is one reading, roughly every couple of seconds. The line is the per-minute average. Bold marks are goals. Hover or tap the chart to read each moment; most have a photo from the game.
By the numbers: a resting rate of 83 and a match average of 106, peaking at 164 the second Messi made it 2-2, which is nearly double resting for someone sitting completely still. Fourteen minutes spent above 120 beats a minute, almost all of them in the last twenty. And around 2,980 beats above my resting rate across the ninety minutes, which is the better part of an extra half-hour of heartbeats spent on a football match. The Fitbit was right. It was a workout.