It's hard to not be romantic about football
Astonishing World Cup Final give us Lionel Messi's moment of peace
Some nights, some matches, some days or maybe even some weeks, Football finds a way to remind us of why we love this game so much.
Why it captures the hearts and minds of millions. Why we can sift through all the bluster and nonsensical issues of the game to experience it’s extraordinary ability to emote and excite us. Both good and bad, from jovial, unbridled joy to crushing despair.
It has an uncanny ability to become operatic, to tell fascinating stories
The story of Lionel Messi and Argentina winning the World Cup in 2022 fits to a tee. A tournament that had the ability to shock when we were least expecting, to get us off our seats and shriek with our friends and family at the sheer magnitude of it’s ability to deliver unpredictable entertainment. Like a gripping slow burner episode of Game of Thrones (not the final season) that provides a twist, a sting in the tale.
Argentina and Messi have experienced every emotion possible in the last four weeks. Beginning with optimism, quickly transforming into dread (Saudi Arabia) then desperate liberation (Poland) back to hope (Australia, Croatia) fired up vengeance (Netherlands) then pure elation (France). It is no wonder you could routinely see Angel Di Maria constantly burst into tears.
They might’ve felt the rollercoaster of emotions rolled into one in 120 minutes plus penalties vs France.
In an extraordinary, pulsating final, that will surely go down as the greatest in history, Argentina’s Qatar journey finally came to a thrilling, joyous end for those in White and Blue winning in the most fitting of manner.
Maybe Argentina were always destined to win this World Cup this way, riding a wave of emotions, fueled by intense fervour in there desperate hope that their other genius would get the trophy he deserved, producing chaotic matches where the unexpected often repeated itself.
The build-up to the final pitted PSG teammates Messi and Mbappe against one another. The battle of football’s present vs future star, but it did feel as though it would be a game that would hinge on one brilliant moment conjured up by one of the two. Finals are cagey like that.
Who’d have thought then that we would actually get to see the two gun sling it out and be the focal points of attack, driving their teams forward showing off their penchant for the sublime.
Argentina were excellent for 70 minutes. Snappy in the tackle, smart and organised in midfield blocking off the key link for France’s attack in Antoine Griezmann. France laboured and sleep walked through large parts of the game, Argentina were feisty.
They also played some of their best football in the whole tournament, finding Messi in half-spaces on the right before switching the ball to Angel Di Maria who consistently tormented France on the left.
Strangely, this miserly, street-wise France team, many players of whom have been to a World Cup and won, seemed to be overwhelmed by Argentina and the occasion and not the opposite way around.
The pressure paid off as Ousmane Dembele, helping to track back with Jules Kounde hauled the dangerous Di Maria down for a soft penalty. Up stepped Argentina’s go-to man who'd already missed this tournament. Cool as you like though, Messi steadied himself and dispatched. Again and again Argentina attacked a shell-shocked France as Messi once again started a sweeping Argentina attacking transition with a glorious one-two volley pass to release Mac Allister to cross for an imperious Di Maria finishing off a fabulous team goal before crying for the first time during the final.
Argentina were the better team and started to believe that finally it could be their time. Messi danced around France, jinking runs, pulling the strings as playmaker, having the influence he’s had the whole tournament.
The focal point, the mesmeric magician but crucially, a magician with able assistants in this Argentina team echoing spooky sentiments of Maradona in 1986. The pre-match tension had shockingly dispersed as Argentinian’s in Blue and White banged the drum, sang the songs and hugged with the onus now on France, a team much more comfortable keeping opponents at arms length before striking with their range of attacking talent.
Deschamps tinkered and couldn’t even wait till the half time whistle to change things hauling off Dembele and a bottle throwing Oliver Giroud to move Mbappe in the middle and try attack Argentina’s flanks more. As it so happened though, France had more possession at some point in the 2nd half but still rarely laid a glove on Argentina.
The problem with playing France though, is like battling Deontay Wilder in a Boxing ring. Or playing Real Madrid a la Champions League 2021-22. You can win the majority of the duel but unless you knock them down for good, even when there is so much of a glimmer of hope, they’re capable of delivering a crushing knockout blow, just ask England.
You have to cut their heads off and bury them 7 metres into the ground as Sam Lee of The Athletic said.
Out of seemingly nowhere France were thrown a lifeline. Kolo Muani, who up until that point had been France’s liveliest player (wasn’t hard) was clumsily brought down by Otamendi and Mbappe stepped up to win the battle of wits with Emi Martinez.
What happened next was beyond extraordinary, it’s one of the most baffling, astounding moments in World Cup history. We all saw it. The impeccable Mbappe volley just one minute later making it 2-2. The audacity, the goddamn audacity, to do that. In a World Cup Final. With 10 minutes left on the clock, first of all to try a volley like that from such an angle and distance but to then back yourself to be able to execute. Outrageous. Incroyable. If this was the great master vs the young chosen one, he had snatched back the torch and limelight heaving France from the abyss.
Messi and Argentina looked shaken and in disbelief, France had done a Netherlands. It was another moment in this World Cup that had caused a serious increase in decible levels in my living room as we shook our heads and yelled in disbelief. Think Wout Weghourst, think Mexico pounding for a goal, think Japan-Spain Germany-Costa Rica.
The tide had dramatically turned as the France beast had woken up threatening the shell-shocked Argentinians, as substitutes Thuram and Muani wreaked havoc with a corner causing chaos, as Emi Martinez another one of Argentina’s best supporting actors needed to intervene. Poetically, it was Messi who gave the ball away in the lead up to Mbappe’s equaliser.
Mbappe roared France forward, he was determined to remind everyone why this was billed as Messi vs Mbappe, rather than the Lionel Messi Coronation as Argentina were all at sea and could’ve lost the game in a delirious end to normal time. All not before Messi could’ve had his epic final say on the game, darting past three France players as they spun dizzily in desperate attempts to halt the great one, testing Lloris in what would’ve been the most epic of finales.
Momentum and wild swings of the pendulum is what has kept this World Cup so engaging, within a quick minute or two game-states have swung frantically with a team in cruise control suddenly on the back foot grasping for air.
The breathless, exuberant pace continued into extra time rather than the normal default of ET where both teams dare blink and end up at penalties in fear of making a mistake.
The game had been turned on it’s head into an extraordinary spectacle, Scaloni smartly attempted to shift the see-saw his way with smart changes bringing on Lautaro Martinez and Leandro Paredes adding a bit of bite and needed energy, which Martinez, though it could be said has missed chances this tournament has at least when called upon, caused problems for defences and the final was no different.
It was his two chances that gave Argentina their shot in the arm again, and his shot that Lloris parried for Messi to scramble over the line and write the headlines once again. Just ten minutes separated Argentina from the World Cup in incredulous circumstances, surely after all that had happened, all they had overcome in this game and throughout the tournament they could feel they had one hand on the trophy. But France came back again and Argentina in this World Cup just couldn’t steer away from doing things in the most exhausting and complicated ways.
A penalty then as the ball was adjudged to hit Montiel on the arm, up stepped Mbappe against one of the best operators in penalties and won….again.
If we spoke earlier about the ridiculousness of the volley, we should talk the equal ridiculousness of scoring 3 penalties past Emi Martinez when his team needed it the most at such a young age. What got me when Mbappe sunk the penalty for 3-3 though was the irrepressible ice in his veins celebration after. His trademark arms crossed, deadpan face. He doesn’t claim to be a superstar or create all the hullabaloo around him for pure vanity, he’s well worth the hype, Mbappe knows what he’s capable of.
As the game headed for penalties, Argentina and Messi remembered they had Martinez, the same man who taunted penalty takers in the Copa America ‘I’m going to eat you up’ and that’s exactly what he did.
Messi when coolly scoring his 1st penalty turned to Martinez nodding furiously with his tongue out, it felt like he knew Argentina had the advantage with their goalkeeper.
Martinez and his dark arts saved three and finally, at long last, Argentina and Lionel Messi are World Cup champions. Cue the tears. Bring on the images of Maradona and Messi parading the trophy side by side, the way it’s supposed to be.
There were no tears at the final whistle from Messi, instead he sprung a satisfied smile, like a sensei at peace. But it was just utterly, ironically fitting that Argentina would win the final and this tournament in this manner.
Where they had to go through everything, ride through everything, be so close yet so far then close again. Messi as a footballer is the one we will talk about 100 years from now and this final and this tournament is another chapter that we will recite to our grandkids. Not that Messi even needed any of this for validation.
He’s a player in his own right, above anyone else, the genius who knows how good he is but doesn’t really care so much for the noise around it. To know Messi's magic you have to watch him dazzle, there are countless examples, it’s a privilege to say this whole tournament was one of them.
Since Messi’s god-like emergence as a footballer the pressure has felt overwhelming to deliver something for Argentina, and by something I mean the same trophy Argentina’s diety in Maradona brought home and famously hoisted whilst carried aloft like a prophet.
The retirement in 2016, the final loss in 2014, it felt like the unnecessary question would hang over his head forever. Until Qatar 2022 when it all made sense, when Argentina’s players were so desperate for him to win it more than them, where the whole country and the whole world wanted the final swansong to be Messi lifting the trophy. As the tournament rumbled on you pined more for him to win it, in his spellbinding performances. The emotion of Messi winning the world cup with Argentina was always supposed to end this way.