Messi at last realises destiny in all-time classic final to join Maradona in World Cup pantheon
CAMPEONE: Argentina captain Lionel Messi lifts the FIFA World Cup trophy following victory over France via a penalty shootout at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail.
Lionel Messi, thankfully, had long since de-robed. His first lift of the World Cup won’t be the one we’ll see for years to come, which is the least Gianni Infantino and the Emir of Qatar deserve for their shameful attempts to hijack one of the greatest moments in the history of this game.
No, we’ll remember the lifts that came in the next half hour as his Argentina teammates raised him up on their shoulders and carried him to his people, who somehow still had a few remaining vocal chords to burn. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Messi had got it, got it all, on a night that will never be forgotten. And as he was raised aloft behind the goals where it had ultimately been decided and in front of the Albiceleste masses, the images were both instantly iconic and yet nostalgic too. They brought 1986 and their other perfect 10 rushing back from the memory banks. Messi aloft literally but now figuratively too, joining Diego in the pantheon.
What day and what a night. After 17 years of waiting, he and they had to hang on in there a little longer than planned — and a lot longer than it had initially seemed they would. The disciples had come here for a coronation. First, they’d have to endure calamity and chaos. But this has been Messi’s journey to immortality, filled with false dawns and broken dreams. Crawling through a 17-year river of shit before he could come out clean at the summit of it all.
Is he ultimately fully clean? The World Cup of sports-washing had one last wipe with the robe the Emir and Infantino forced on Messi during the trophy presentation. Messi has done plenty of invisibly cloaked bidding for both Qatar and Saudi Arabia. His crowning moment came with a more visible reminder of it all. Qatar, after all, had been winners on this night too.
As the gleaming Lusail Stadium witnessed the wildest and most wondrous World Cup final in living memory, a game that almost killed us all, Messi twice thought he was finally at the end of the tunnel. Kylian Mbappé intervened. The PSG pretender twice dragged back the master, scoring a World Cup final hat trick in the process. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the fulfilment of the Messi prophecies.
“The match was completely insane,” said Lionel Scaloni in one of his first post-match offerings. He’d reach for many more words but those five summed it up pretty well. The manager was wearing an Argentina jersey with a freshly added third star above the crest. His own journey is nothing short of remarkable too.
All of this would only be decided from the spot as Emiliano Martinez and Gonzalo Montiel, who himself had conceded the 118th minute penalty that gave Mbappé his second stunning equaliser, were the shoot-out heroes. Messi looked five, ten years younger as he cavorted in front of the Argentine army while he waited to lift the trophy. A lifetime’s worth of stresses fell away in glory.
But it had been decided in dozens of other ways too. There are only so many words of space here in front of us and that’s a good thing. Because there could be books written about the eight minutes of added time at the end of the 90. And there could be a series of sequels published about the four minutes at the end of extra time too.
France had risen from the dead after 70 minutes of utterly insipid play. But, even in a time when we rush for hyperbole, the final hour of this contest may have been the most incredible in the history of this tournament. Where to start with it all?
Eighty minutes on the clock. Messi was just ten minutes away. He had his World Cup, had been lifted up to join the game’s gods by Angel Di Maria as Argentine choruses filled the Doha sky. Two goals to the good. Total control after his first-half penalty and Di Maria’s gorgeous second, a sweeping team move, had left France looked dead and buried.
Mbappé had other ideas. But his head only filled when Nicolas Otamendi lost his, the defender conceding a needless penalty that Mbappé buried low beyond Emi Martinez. From nowhere, France, who hadn’t even been passengers in the procession but poorly bystanders, were in it and level within seconds when the French No.10 volleyed in seconds after Messi himself had been dispossessed. Messi stood at the centre circle, head bowed as Mbappé walked past and pumped his fist.
But Scaloni’s side righted themselves in extra time and when Messi bundled in — barely — on 108 minutes he was there again. Until he wasn’t. Mbappé scored a second penalty and we were somehow right back where we started. There were almost 90,000 inside here and each heart had skipped a dozen beats by now.
Deschamps’ drastic first-half substations had taken a while to warm up but worked wonders. Randal Kolo Muani, who had won the penalty to start the fightback, could have won it when sent racing clear on 123 minutes but Martinez produced a wonder save stretching out a foot to stop it. Racing up the other end, our eyes now barely able to focus in the blurs of marvellous madness, there was still time for Argentine substitute Lautaro Martinez to horribly skew a head wide when he really ought to have scored.
Bless Martinez and Montiel for finding a way to end it all. The Aston Villa goalkeeper, who makes shootouts of the highest stakes look like a breeze, stopped Kingsley Coman with France’s second kick and Argentine hearts and voices rose again. When Aurelien Tchouameni sent the next French effort wide, the champions’ grip had been released. It was left to Montiel to reach out and grab it.
Messi crumpled to the ground, those little legs that had got him through 17 years of this unable to hold him up any longer. His mother would soon be on the pitch to suffocate him in an embrace. So many in powder blue and white had helped him get here. Di Maria’s performance will, cruelly, fade into the memory a little because it came in the first hour, the boring one. Enzo Fernandez was again magnificent in the middle but Emi Martinez did more to get his captain over the line than any other Argentine.
We know we’re forgetting things, likely very important things, here. But it was that kinda night. Referee Szymon Marciniak deserves a word, probably many. Even Mbappé’s historic heroics are almost a footnote. In the end much will fade off into the desert night. Hopefully that robe can quickly become the most distant of memories. What we’ll be left with are those magical images of a dream lived out in the most dramatic way imaginable.
"It's anyone's childhood dream," Messi said afterwards. "I was lucky to have achieved everything in this career and this one that was missing is here. It's madness! Look how she (the World Cup) is, she's gorgeous. I wanted her so much. I had a vision that this would be the one.”
The one and the only. Worth 17 years and 120 minutes of waiting.
Martinez 6; Molina 6 (Montiel 91), Romero 7, Otamendi 6, Tagliafico 6 (Dybala 120); Di María 9 (Acuna 64), De Paul 6 Paredes, E Fernández 7, Mac Allister 7; Messi 9, Álvarez 7 (L. Martinez 102).
Goals: Messi (23 P; 108); Di Maria (36).
Booked: Fernandez, Acuna, Paredes, Montiel, Martinez
: Lloris 6; Kounde 5 (Disasi 120), Varane 5 (Konate 113), Upamecano 5, Hernandez 4 (Camavinga 72); Tchouameni 6, Rabiot 5 (Fofana 96); Griezmann 4 (Coman 72); Dembele 3 (Kolo Muani 40), Giroud 4 (Thuram 40), Mbappe 8.
Goals: Mbappé (80 P; 81; 118 P) Booked: Rabiot, Thuram, Giroud.
: Szymon Marciniak (POL) 8
: 88,966
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