MANY OF THE conversations that have filled the yawning Doha days in the build-up to the final game have been linked by one consistent question.
Will It happen?
The best stories in sport are generally those that wouldn’t survive a second draft in any other writers’ room, but football’s most seductive tale has endured to the finale of the 2022 World Cup.
Lionel Messi, the greatest player of his generation, crowning his legacy by winning the greatest prize of all in his final appearance on the world’s stage.
Most people tuning in will want to see it happen.
Why? Rationally, Messi is no less tainted by the modern game than any other player. He is on the Qatari payroll at PSG and is an ambassador for Saudi Arabia. He hardly needs the money, given his berserk salary was one of the factors that pushed Barcelona to the brink. He has shed his son-in-law innocence too: late-stage Leo is now a tattooed, bearded, and brooding figure, flaring his nostrils at opponents like he never did before.
And yet he remains the world’s romantic hero.
It’s partly for a sense of completion but it’s also for reasons beyond merely a pleasing Wikipedia list. Messi’s triumph would satisfy our insatiable vicariousness. We all want to be privvy to great and important events, and Argentina winning this World Cup would instantly endow the competition with historical resonance; there would be no audit of this World Cup in comparison to previous editions, its significance would be immediately apparent.
Messi ’22 would be the instant counterpart for Maradona ’86, the two men linked neatly in regal lineage.
If France win, then the historical parallel is 1990, where Argentina also lost their opening game to recover and make the final, only to lose to the dominant European side of the era.
Should Argentina win, of course, then one of the most amoral World Cup hosts of all time would forever have legitimate claim to one of the sport’s greatest morality tales. Welcome to the knotted principles of the modern world. Plus, Qatar already have the World Cup pairing they dreamed of, with a pair of their employees Messi and Kylian Mbappe the stars of the greatest show on Earth. When you’ve got that much money, you can’t lose.
Lionel Scaloni yesterday stressed this final is not about Messi versus Mbappe but in many ways it is. Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud, Enzo Fernandez, and Julian Alvarez have all proved vital to their teams but Mbappe and Messi are the difference-makers, the players around whom their attack is built and against whom their defence mitigates.
Mbappe is not asked to defend by France but instead he loiters about, ready to spring and offer a truly terrifying counter-attacking threat. This wasn’t a major issue for France until left-back Lucas Hernandez got injured in the opening game. His replacement and brother Theo is much better going forward but a defensive liability. Morocco showed how to exploit the generous space behind Mbappe in the semi-final, so Scaloni will aim to do likewise. And for that he can turn to Messi, as it is into that space you can expect to see him drift.
The fitness of Adrien Rabiot is vital for France, as he shuttles across plugs some of those gaps. Rabiot and Dayot Upamecano missed the semi-final through a virus that has ripped through the French camp, with Kingsley Coman, Ibrahima Konate, and Raphael Varane all struck down too. All were able to train yesterday, however.
There are legacies beyond Messi’s on the line today. France can become the first side to defend the title in 60 years, Mbappe can become modernity’s counterpart to Pele and Didier Deschamps can write himself into World Cup legend as the first man to lift the Cup as captain and then win it back-to-back as a manager. It would be an astonishing achievement for a man who remains curiously unloved by many in France.
Deschamps is blessed with a truly remarkable collection of players but he has nonetheless done a brilliant job in guiding France to another final. Without his first-choice midfield duo of Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kante, Deschamps found a solution by overhauling his attack.
Mbappe swapped from the right to the left, Griezmann was retooled as an all-action advanced midfielder and Olivier Giroud was asked to take some of the goalscoring burden. The result is an attack elevated by Mbappe but not reliant on him. England shackled him brilliantly in the quarter-final but still they lost, with Giroud scoring the winning goal. Giroud didn’t even have a shot on target in Russia four years ago, but only Mbappe and Messi have outscored him in Qatar.
France are certainly more vulnerable than they were four years ago and they now lack depth in most positions, but their individual quality and the collective balance of their attack are compensating for those diminishing traits.
The great club managers are ideologues but the best at international level are improvisors. Deschamps has proved this ahead of the tournament but, more impressively, Scaloni has exhibited the same during the tournament. Argentina sailed into the World Cup as South American champions on a 36-match unbeaten run but were then shocked by Saudi Arabia. How Scaloni ripped up a long-working plan and reacted to a shattering emotional blow while the tournament was ongoing deserves enormous credit.
The moment everything clicked was not the moment Messi liberated Argentina with his goal against Mexico, but a minute before: it was the moment Alvarez was subbed on for Lautaro Martinez, while Enzo Fernandez had been brought on a few minutes earlier. Their additions to the team have been vital, while Scaloni has got all of his tactics right to this point by swapping between a back three and a back four. Both are options again in today’s final.
Another of his triumphs has been to foster a collective unity, in which Messi has emerged as a vocal, forthright leader, giving team-mates the respect they need to bloom rather than shrink beside him on the pitch. Scaloni has brought a number of players into the squad for these final days including Sergio Aguero, who had to retire early from the game for health reasons. He last night roomed with Messi for one final time, the pair having been inseparable on Argentina duty stretching right back to the underage days.
Aguero’s presence will have been a reminder to Messi of all the time that has passed: from the floppy-haired innocence of his first days to the strange two-way ambivalence of his peak, continuing through to the quiet turmoil of 2014 and the loud psychodrama of four years later.
But Leo knows what the rest of the world knows.
There are now 90 minutes left, and only great glory or heartbreak awaits.
