From our special envoy (well, what’s left of it) in Doha,
The France team ceded its title of world champion to Argentina’s Leo Messi on Sunday evening, after an absolutely crazy match. Long next to their subject, liquefied by the event and finally logically trailing 2-0 to the mark, Didier Deschamps’ men finally turned on the light in two minutes at the very end of the game thanks to a double from Kylian Mbappé. If the extensions also gave birth to a scenario without common measure, and two new goals, the Blues then lost everything during the penalty shootout.
Football, ladies and gentlemen. There are things in life which can be explained, which are fixed, quantifiable, which can be proven by science, physics or mathematics. Why the earth is round or why the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the other two sides. And then there is football. A little further up there is the World Cup. And absolutely above again, there is this final of the 2022 World Cup between France and Argentina, disputed on Sunday evening in a Lusail enclosure all dressed in sky blue and white. Until the 80th minute, let’s be honest, this match until then all in all not so crazy – if we start from the principle that we are French and that we support the team of Didier Deschamps – was to be put in the archive closet in the radius of the biggest stews in the history of the Blues in the World Cup.
Ghostly and soft in the knee since the start of the match, the men of Didier Deschamps literally liquefied in the face of the magnitude of the event. Opposite, on the contrary, the Argentinians attacked this meeting foot to the floor and the knife between the canines. And if the referee felt obliged to offer a new peno to Messi in this World Cup, for an almost non-existent fault (it goes without saying) by Dembélé on Di Maria, in the end, see the band at Scaloni leading 2 -0 at the break after a second pawn from PSG’s former Fideo couldn’t be more logical.
Two minutes out of time. The 80th minute, they said. While from the press gallery the French media contingent was pulling a mug fifteen kilometers long, we were putting an end to a salty report from salty for the DD band and we were preparing to bend the Gauls, not without saluting the Argentinians for their deserved victory, the irrational took possession of the premises. Entering at the end of the first period to replace a Dembélé next to his shoes, Randal Kolo Muani, already a scorer in the semi-final against Morocco, provoked after a sprint and a fierce duel with Otamendi a peno (indisputably the one there) transformed by Mbappé.
As against the Netherlands in the quarter-finals, the Messi’s boys then began to see slightly blurred, and we to believe it. A minute later, without anyone understanding how, Mbappé found himself slamming a volley from space for the equalizer. Furious madness on the French bench, explosion of joy among the thousands of tricolor supporters posted behind the Argentine goal, and stupor and tremors in the South American ranks.
An unbreathable finish, a memorable slap. And what about next? Besides, how to tell it to you when, even in the most tortured mind of a Hollywood director on amphetamines, this scenario would never have seen the light of day. At this level of madness, it’s no longer football, it’s Mozart giving birth to the Mona Lisa in the Gardens of Delights. Or something like that, we lose our minds too, sorry. A third Argentinian goal signed by Messi and here is the furnace of Lusail which implodes ten minutes from the end of extra time. But the story could not end like this. No, not without a hat-trick from Mbappé, again on peno, after a hand from Montiel in the box. Randal Kolo Muani even had the title ball at the end of the foot and regulation time, but Martinez diverted from the shin.
Because history wanted this World Cup final, probably the most beautiful of all, to end in what football has most beautiful and most cruel to offer, the penalty shootout. And in this little game, like their elders sixteen years earlier against Italy, as too often, the Blues fell. Messi is world champion, the tricolors pass the baton to him, not without having it bad. But let the Blues rest assured, with the emotions they gave us for a month, and for more than 120 minutes on Sunday evening, there will be no one to hold it against them. See you in four years, Messi will be retired and Mbappé (still) in the prime of life.