This World Cup will be remembered for Lionel Messi. Having shattered all records, it was the perfect ending to a beautiful career.
In the most scintillating World Cup final ever, Argentina emerged as the champions defeating France 4-2 on Penalties. This was after a dramatic 3-3 draw. Nailbiting from start to finish, it couldn’t get better than this.
Argentina took the lead in the first half when Lionel Messi converted a 23rd-minute penalty into a goal. This was followed by a goal from Angel Di Maria in the 36th minute, who had remained benched throughout the tournament. But he got into the playing 11 only in the final. France looked toothless in front of relentless attack from Messi’s Argentina.
However, the World Cup final took a dramatic turn when back-to-back two goals from France’s Kylian Mbappe within two minutes changed the tide of the match. Already having an outstanding tournament Kylian Mbappe went on to score the first World Cup final hat-trick since 1966; scoring another goal in the 118th minute. With that, he became the player to score the most goals in the tournament. This was after Lionel Messi scored in the 109th minute and brought the score to 3-2 for Argentina. This got levelled by the last-minute hat-trick goal of Mbappe bringing the score to 3-3.
The jaw-dropping finale went into the penalty shootouts where Argentina finally beat France 4-2 lifting the World Cup for the first time since 1986.
However, this World Cup will be remembered for Lionel Messi. Having shattered all records, it was the perfect ending to a beautiful career. Having played five editions of the FIFA World Cup, Messi is now the most capped player in the history of the tournament. Messi is also the only player to score in the group stage, the round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final and final of a single edition of the World Cup. Lionel Messi is now arguably the greatest player of this generation having won La Liga, UEFA Champions League, Ballon D’Or, Ligue 1, U-20 World Cup, Olympic Gold Medal, Finalissima and now the FIFA World Cup.
The thrilling finale which saw the game change like a see-saw almost crashed the servers of Twitter which experienced lag and buffering especially at the end stages of the match. Many users complained about not being able to post or view photos as the network became agonizingly slow.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar came to an end with Argentina’s Emiliano Martinez winning the Golden Glove. Kylian Mbappe won the Golden Boot for scoring 8 goals in the tournament.
While the Young Player of the Tournament award went to Argentina’s 21-year-old Enzo Fernandez. Messi won the Golden Ball award, deemed to be the best player of the tournament.
This is Argentina’s 3rd World Cup having won the last one in 1986 under the legendary Diego Maradona.