FIRST THERE WAS a coronation then a regicide and then wild, bloody chaos until at the end of it all, Lionel Messi stood apart, wearing his crown.
Whatever about a tide in the affairs of men that leads to fortune when taken at the flood, Messi found his in the desert. And on what was his final chance.
This was the final the world wanted Messi to win, but only Kylian Mbappe came not to praise Caesar. He almost buried him: his hat-trick igniting a dreadful French performance and elevating this to the greatest World Cup final of modern times.
Argentina, however, won the battle over France and then the war with their own terrifying, demented will to win, keeping calm in the penalty shootout.
Gonzalo Montiel realises he has just won the World Cup. PA
PA
Gonzalo Montiel conceded the penalty from which France scored their extra-time equaliser but he found instant redemption by scoring his penalty, whipping off his shirt as he trotted away, plunging his eyes into the fabric as the enormous reality of what he had achieved had just dawned on him. Half of his team-mates joined him in the corner while the other half were arranged around Messi, in celebration, supplication.
At the start of it all, Kylian Mbappe gave no hint of the chaos that was to let slip, smiling coolly during the anthems. The rest of his team-mates jittered their way through the opening minutes: Ousmane Dembele miscontrolled the ball right of play; Theo Hernandez and Antoine Griezmann popped easy passes to Argentine players.
Argentina were a perfect contrast, flying into challenges with a reformist’s zeal while retaining utter conviction and composure on it.
Their football flowed with frictionless ease, scything through the French midfield. Their sharpest weapon was not initially Messi but the returning Angel Di Maria, repositioned from the right to the left wing. It was another masterstroke from Lionel Scaloni: Jules Kounde is a centre back who has been shuffled over to right-back but had yet to be exposed throughout the tournament thus far.
Di Maria waited until the grandest stage of all to shine a pitiless, unforgiving glare upon him. Standing right on the touchline, Di Maria constantly dragged Kounde into lands too far from home, before then skating by him. Soon Demeble tracked back to try to help out. Big mistake.
Di Maria deceived him with a swerve of his hips and then glided beyond him before going to ground under what looked like minimal contact. Messi stood over the penalty, closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and then won a staring contest with Lloris, coldly waiting for the goalkeeper to shift his weight before rolling the ball the opposite way.
Lloris picked himself up and glanced away from the Argentine celebrations looking pale with shock. Worse was to come, a second Argentine goal completing a sweeping, glorious move. Nahuel Molina summed up Argentina’s ambition by playing the ball forward with his first touch to Macallister, but it was Messi who clicked the key in the lock.
Late-stage Leo diffuses his genius nowadays, splicing them into subtle vignettes and sprinkling them across games. He took the ball from Macallister for was his latest piece of deft art. First he flicked the ball up but didn’t wait for it to meet his foot a second time, instead catching it halfway through its descent with the outside of his boot, slickly stabbing it around the corner for Julian Alvarez.
His team-mates did the rest. Alvarez pushed it forward for Alexis Macallister, sprinting into oceans of space created by French bodies who pushed up expecting Messi might still have had the ball. Nope. Striding forward, he slipped through Di Maria, who kicked the ball into the ground and over Lloris.
Argentina bodies piled upon one another, Messi grabbing Di Maria in an embrace suggesting he would never let him go. When he eventually did, Di Maria wiped tears from his eyes.
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The Lusail Stadium shook to the sonorous rhythm of the Argentina fans, while France reeled in an extraordinary shock. Didier Deschamps tried to do something – anything – and took off Dembele and Olivier Giroud on the 41st minute. It affected precisely nothing.
France didn’t so much as have a shot either on or off target in the first half, and Mbappe trudged down the tunnel with his face now glowering having had fewer touches than any other player in the game. And two of those players had been taken off 11 minutes earlier.
The miserable French turmoil continued long into the second half, the wretched Theo Hernandez setting the tone by missing Lloris’ thrown pass and allowing the ball out of play. France’s first shot of any kind arrived in the 70th minute as the game took on the precise form of Argentina’s semi-final win over Croatia, as they gobbled up attacks in midfield and sprang forward on the counter.
But unlike against Croatia they couldn’t find the third goal to seal the game, so then Argentina were confronted by their nightmare ghost, that of the quarter-final against the Dutch.
The press box was still clacking, reaching for words fitting to describe the sheer badness of the French performance when Argentina’s 2-0 lead just went…poof.
Nico Otamendi, beaten for pace, tangled with Randal Kolo Muani in the box and conceded a penalty. Emi Martinez got an agonising glove to Mbappe’s shot but was beaten by the power of the shot.
Argentina didn’t give themselves long to worry about a repeat of their quarter-final breakdown: it happened straight away. With Di Maria replaced by the more defensive Marcos Acuna, Messi had no outlet down the left so instead dribbled into a blind alley where he was unfathomably, inexplicably, bizarrely, dispossessed.
He turned around to see all hell unfold. Rabiot floated a hopeless ball to Mbappe’s head, which he nodded to Thuram, from whom he took an instant pass and volleyed the ball into the bottom corner.
Like Messi for his side’s second goal, he took the ball early in its descent.
Kylian Mbappe. Xinhua News Agency / PA Images
Xinhua News Agency / PA Images / PA Images
Understandably seduced by the moment, Mbappe briefly looked at himself celebrate on the stadium’s screen as Messi gritted his teeth, looking admirably enigmatic for a man whose impossible dream had just met an impossible implosion. The Argentine fans were struck dumb – there was no fortifying themselves against something as awful as this.
The fans were stupefied and the players were scrambled, and what followed into eight minutes of added time was utter, enthralling madness. Argentina hurled themselves madly into tackles, looking like conceding a penalty every time France took the ball into the box. Referee Marciniak did brilliantly to spot Argentina’s nerviest moment of them all was in fact a dive by Marcus Thuram.
This is the World Cup of endless added time but it stood briefly still when Messi took the ball in characteristic pose outside the box. He dropped his shoulder, jinked inside, took that extra touch for which only he seems eligible, and let fly. Lloris clawed it over the bar.
Argentina survived to extra-time and like against the Dutch they steadied themselves, with Lautaro Martinez introduced for his customary torture in front of goal, delaying too long from Messi’s pass and allowing Upamecano block his shot.
The whistle provided a brief respite from the madness.
Four minutes after the break, a long ball over the top onto which Lautaro pounced, exchanging a one-two with Messi before unleashing a shot too strong for Lloris, carrying as it did the thrust of awesome narrative.
Xinhua News Agency / PA Images
Xinhua News Agency / PA Images / PA Images
He parried and it found Messi following it in, who prodded the ball over the line and set arcing away in glory, any confusion in the ground as to whether the ball crossed the line ended by the sight of the Argentine bench streaking across the pitch.
Messi screamed, face contorted by emotion, Di Maria wept on the bench, and the Argentine players rallyed their frenzied crowd for the final minutes. The crowd reached its frenzy, screeching in unbearable proximity to their unbearable glory. Unbearable and ultimately unreal.
Once again it was Mbappe, his shot hitting the outstretched arm of substitute Gonzalo Montiel, and Mbappe, faced with the conundrum of whether to vary from a winning routine, stuck with his original plan. Same outcome.
Di Maria wept hot, uncontrollable tears.
Yet more carnage lay in store, a starfished Emi Martinez somehow blocked a certain winning goal by Kuolo Muani and seconds later Laurtaro planted a free header wide of the post. The final act was Mbappe skating in off the left, lethal as ever, before being eventually snuffed out.
He shook his head as the final whistle blew. The world moved in sync.
Emi Martinez is overcome with emotion. PA
PA
Thus it was a shootout. Mbappe remarkably kept his nerve to score a third penalty, Messi looked like he survived an exorcism as his took approximately 15 years to cross the line. The Argentine fans blanketed the arena in boos and whistles as Kingsley Coman stood to order, seeing his penalty blocked by Emi Martinez. Paulo Dybala kept his nerve for Argentina and then Aurelien Tchouameni hooked his wide. It fell to Montiel, who completed his short redemptive arc while fulfilling the long, yawning one of Messi’s career.
Messi was the only one not to instantly break down in tears, leading the Argentine fans in ecstatic symphony.
And ultimately it was he who took the trophy into his hands, the first Argentine to grasp it since Diego.
No more itching palms.
The story is told.
Argentina: Emiliano Martinez; Nahuel Molina (Gonzalo Montiel, 90′), Christian Romero, Nicolas Otamendi, Nicolas Tagliafico (Paulo Dybala, 120′); Angel Di Maria (Marcos Acuna, 63′), Rodrigo de Paul (Lautaro Martinez, 101′), Enzo Fernandez, Alexis Macallister (German Pezzella, 116′); Lionel Messi (captain), Julian Alvarez (Leandro Paredes, 101′)
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Messi takes his crown in Argentina's absurd, epic World Cup final victory over France
Argentina 3
France 3
Argentina win 4-2 on penalties
FIRST THERE WAS a coronation then a regicide and then wild, bloody chaos until at the end of it all, Lionel Messi stood apart, wearing his crown.
Whatever about a tide in the affairs of men that leads to fortune when taken at the flood, Messi found his in the desert. And on what was his final chance.
This was the final the world wanted Messi to win, but only Kylian Mbappe came not to praise Caesar. He almost buried him: his hat-trick igniting a dreadful French performance and elevating this to the greatest World Cup final of modern times.
Argentina, however, won the battle over France and then the war with their own terrifying, demented will to win, keeping calm in the penalty shootout.
Gonzalo Montiel conceded the penalty from which France scored their extra-time equaliser but he found instant redemption by scoring his penalty, whipping off his shirt as he trotted away, plunging his eyes into the fabric as the enormous reality of what he had achieved had just dawned on him. Half of his team-mates joined him in the corner while the other half were arranged around Messi, in celebration, supplication.
At the start of it all, Kylian Mbappe gave no hint of the chaos that was to let slip, smiling coolly during the anthems. The rest of his team-mates jittered their way through the opening minutes: Ousmane Dembele miscontrolled the ball right of play; Theo Hernandez and Antoine Griezmann popped easy passes to Argentine players.
Argentina were a perfect contrast, flying into challenges with a reformist’s zeal while retaining utter conviction and composure on it.
Their football flowed with frictionless ease, scything through the French midfield. Their sharpest weapon was not initially Messi but the returning Angel Di Maria, repositioned from the right to the left wing. It was another masterstroke from Lionel Scaloni: Jules Kounde is a centre back who has been shuffled over to right-back but had yet to be exposed throughout the tournament thus far.
Di Maria waited until the grandest stage of all to shine a pitiless, unforgiving glare upon him. Standing right on the touchline, Di Maria constantly dragged Kounde into lands too far from home, before then skating by him. Soon Demeble tracked back to try to help out. Big mistake.
Di Maria deceived him with a swerve of his hips and then glided beyond him before going to ground under what looked like minimal contact. Messi stood over the penalty, closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and then won a staring contest with Lloris, coldly waiting for the goalkeeper to shift his weight before rolling the ball the opposite way.
Lloris picked himself up and glanced away from the Argentine celebrations looking pale with shock. Worse was to come, a second Argentine goal completing a sweeping, glorious move. Nahuel Molina summed up Argentina’s ambition by playing the ball forward with his first touch to Macallister, but it was Messi who clicked the key in the lock.
Late-stage Leo diffuses his genius nowadays, splicing them into subtle vignettes and sprinkling them across games. He took the ball from Macallister for was his latest piece of deft art. First he flicked the ball up but didn’t wait for it to meet his foot a second time, instead catching it halfway through its descent with the outside of his boot, slickly stabbing it around the corner for Julian Alvarez.
His team-mates did the rest. Alvarez pushed it forward for Alexis Macallister, sprinting into oceans of space created by French bodies who pushed up expecting Messi might still have had the ball. Nope. Striding forward, he slipped through Di Maria, who kicked the ball into the ground and over Lloris.
Argentina bodies piled upon one another, Messi grabbing Di Maria in an embrace suggesting he would never let him go. When he eventually did, Di Maria wiped tears from his eyes.
The Lusail Stadium shook to the sonorous rhythm of the Argentina fans, while France reeled in an extraordinary shock. Didier Deschamps tried to do something – anything – and took off Dembele and Olivier Giroud on the 41st minute. It affected precisely nothing.
France didn’t so much as have a shot either on or off target in the first half, and Mbappe trudged down the tunnel with his face now glowering having had fewer touches than any other player in the game. And two of those players had been taken off 11 minutes earlier.
The miserable French turmoil continued long into the second half, the wretched Theo Hernandez setting the tone by missing Lloris’ thrown pass and allowing the ball out of play. France’s first shot of any kind arrived in the 70th minute as the game took on the precise form of Argentina’s semi-final win over Croatia, as they gobbled up attacks in midfield and sprang forward on the counter.
But unlike against Croatia they couldn’t find the third goal to seal the game, so then Argentina were confronted by their nightmare ghost, that of the quarter-final against the Dutch.
The press box was still clacking, reaching for words fitting to describe the sheer badness of the French performance when Argentina’s 2-0 lead just went…poof.
Nico Otamendi, beaten for pace, tangled with Randal Kolo Muani in the box and conceded a penalty. Emi Martinez got an agonising glove to Mbappe’s shot but was beaten by the power of the shot.
Argentina didn’t give themselves long to worry about a repeat of their quarter-final breakdown: it happened straight away. With Di Maria replaced by the more defensive Marcos Acuna, Messi had no outlet down the left so instead dribbled into a blind alley where he was unfathomably, inexplicably, bizarrely, dispossessed.
He turned around to see all hell unfold. Rabiot floated a hopeless ball to Mbappe’s head, which he nodded to Thuram, from whom he took an instant pass and volleyed the ball into the bottom corner.
Like Messi for his side’s second goal, he took the ball early in its descent.
Understandably seduced by the moment, Mbappe briefly looked at himself celebrate on the stadium’s screen as Messi gritted his teeth, looking admirably enigmatic for a man whose impossible dream had just met an impossible implosion. The Argentine fans were struck dumb – there was no fortifying themselves against something as awful as this.
The fans were stupefied and the players were scrambled, and what followed into eight minutes of added time was utter, enthralling madness. Argentina hurled themselves madly into tackles, looking like conceding a penalty every time France took the ball into the box. Referee Marciniak did brilliantly to spot Argentina’s nerviest moment of them all was in fact a dive by Marcus Thuram.
This is the World Cup of endless added time but it stood briefly still when Messi took the ball in characteristic pose outside the box. He dropped his shoulder, jinked inside, took that extra touch for which only he seems eligible, and let fly. Lloris clawed it over the bar.
Argentina survived to extra-time and like against the Dutch they steadied themselves, with Lautaro Martinez introduced for his customary torture in front of goal, delaying too long from Messi’s pass and allowing Upamecano block his shot.
The whistle provided a brief respite from the madness.
Four minutes after the break, a long ball over the top onto which Lautaro pounced, exchanging a one-two with Messi before unleashing a shot too strong for Lloris, carrying as it did the thrust of awesome narrative.
He parried and it found Messi following it in, who prodded the ball over the line and set arcing away in glory, any confusion in the ground as to whether the ball crossed the line ended by the sight of the Argentine bench streaking across the pitch.
Messi screamed, face contorted by emotion, Di Maria wept on the bench, and the Argentine players rallyed their frenzied crowd for the final minutes. The crowd reached its frenzy, screeching in unbearable proximity to their unbearable glory. Unbearable and ultimately unreal.
Once again it was Mbappe, his shot hitting the outstretched arm of substitute Gonzalo Montiel, and Mbappe, faced with the conundrum of whether to vary from a winning routine, stuck with his original plan. Same outcome.
Di Maria wept hot, uncontrollable tears.
Yet more carnage lay in store, a starfished Emi Martinez somehow blocked a certain winning goal by Kuolo Muani and seconds later Laurtaro planted a free header wide of the post. The final act was Mbappe skating in off the left, lethal as ever, before being eventually snuffed out.
He shook his head as the final whistle blew. The world moved in sync.
Thus it was a shootout. Mbappe remarkably kept his nerve to score a third penalty, Messi looked like he survived an exorcism as his took approximately 15 years to cross the line. The Argentine fans blanketed the arena in boos and whistles as Kingsley Coman stood to order, seeing his penalty blocked by Emi Martinez. Paulo Dybala kept his nerve for Argentina and then Aurelien Tchouameni hooked his wide. It fell to Montiel, who completed his short redemptive arc while fulfilling the long, yawning one of Messi’s career.
Messi was the only one not to instantly break down in tears, leading the Argentine fans in ecstatic symphony.
And ultimately it was he who took the trophy into his hands, the first Argentine to grasp it since Diego.
No more itching palms.
The story is told.
Argentina: Emiliano Martinez; Nahuel Molina (Gonzalo Montiel, 90′), Christian Romero, Nicolas Otamendi, Nicolas Tagliafico (Paulo Dybala, 120′); Angel Di Maria (Marcos Acuna, 63′), Rodrigo de Paul (Lautaro Martinez, 101′), Enzo Fernandez, Alexis Macallister (German Pezzella, 116′); Lionel Messi (captain), Julian Alvarez (Leandro Paredes, 101′)
France: Hugo Lloris; Jules Kounde (Axel Diasai, 120′), Raphael Varane (Ibrahima Konate, 113′) Dayot Upamecano, Theo Hernandez (Eduardo Camavinga, 70′); Aurelien Tchouameni, Adrien Rabiot (Youssouf Fofana, 95′); Ousmane Dembele (Randal Kolo Muani, 41′), Antoine Griezmann (Kingsley Coman, 70′), Kylian Mbappe; Olivier Giroud (Marcus Thuram, 41′)
Referee: Szymon Marciniak (Poland)
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2022 World Cup Argentina France The Messi End