Albion's Alexis Mac Allister netted his first international goal to help Argentina beat Poland and secure a spot in the last 16 of the World Cup last night.

After seeing a controversial Lionel Messi penalty saved by Wojciech Szczesny in the first half, the 23-year-old swept home Nahuel Molina's cross within a minute of the restart.

And Manchester City striker Julian Alvarez fired home an impressive second midway through the second half to seal a deserved win and top spot in Group C.

Argentina had suffered a shock 2-1 defeat against Saudi Arabia in their first game of the tournament, before beating Mexico 2-0, and will be heavy favourites when they face Australia on Saturday (7pm).

And manager Lionel Scaloni warned against complacency, saying: "Maybe we didn't play that well against Saudi Arabia but we had the chances to win.

"We ended up losing, so all matches are tough and if you think that the match against Australia is going to be easy you are wrong.

"When you are defeated you have to move on, you can't keep thinking about that defeat - we had two more games to play and we have gone through now. We knew we had to win the remaining games."

Australia, beaten 4-1 by defending champions France in their opener, ensured their progress with a 1-0 win over Denmark after beating Tunisia by the same margin.

And Poland also scraped through to the knockout stages for the first time since 1986 on goal difference to earn a meeting with the French, after their players huddled around a TV screen on the pitch to see Mexico concede a last-gasp goal in their 2-1 victory over the Saudis.

Until that moment, it looked like Poland's better fair-play record would be the determining factor, with them having two fewer bookings than the Mexicans after Grzegorz Krychowiak's yellow card on 78 minutes.

Head coach Czeslaw Michniewicz said: "My heart stopped a bit when Grzegorz was booked, we knew it was minus three points and fair play was already taken into consideration.

"Piotr Zielinski was supposed to leave, but we substituted Krychowiak because for five minutes we didn't have control of the game and couldn't make the substitution, while he was endangered by the second yellow card.

"My technical staff told me there was only a difference of two or three yellow cards so it was very close, we were at a difficult time when it was 2-0.

"The mistake of Krychowiak could have made us go back to the hotel and pack but now we are going to play France.

"I told them to avoid stupid cards, we were doing anything to avoid any provocation, avoid talking to referees.

"After many, many years we went through to the next stage, I would like to congratulate my whole team and staff.

"We are very happy about it, we have worked hard, we have gained four points, the rules have been clear form the very beginning, we knew what was counted was the goals but also the yellow cards."