Mbappe's Two World Cup Finals: A Goal at 19, Then a Hat-Trick

Kylian Mbappe has played in two World Cup finals. He has scored in both. He has more goals across those two matches than any player in the history of the tournament's showpiece game. And he has lost one of them anyway. That contradiction - the individual record that keeps growing against a personal ledger stuck at one win, one loss - is the whole story of Mbappe's relationship with the biggest match in football.

Moscow, 65th minute: the second teenager since Pele

France's 4-2 win over Croatia at the Luzhniki Stadium on 15 July 2018 was already decided in France's favor by the time Mbappe got involved directly. Mario Mandzukic's own goal in the 18th minute, an Antoine Griezmann penalty in the 38th and Paul Pogba's strike in the 59th had put France 3-1 up after Ivan Perisic had pulled one back for Croatia. Then, in the 65th minute, Mbappe took a pass on the edge of the box and drove a low shot from around 25 yards past Domagoj Vida and goalkeeper Danijel Subasic into the corner. He was 19 years old. It made him the second teenager ever to score in a World Cup final, after Pele did it twice at 17 in 1958 - a gap of sixty years between the two. Mbappe finished the tournament with the Best Young Player award and a winner's medal in his first World Cup, still a teenager.

Lusail, four years later: the hat-trick nobody could stop

The 2022 final against Argentina at Lusail Stadium on 18 December looked, for long stretches, like it would barely feature Mbappe at all. Lionel Messi's 23rd-minute penalty and Angel Di Maria's 36th-minute finish put Argentina 2-0 up, and France barely had a shot on target through the first hour. Then, in the 80th minute, Randal Kolo Muani was fouled in the box and Mbappe converted the penalty. Ninety-seven seconds later he struck again - a first-time volley off a Marcus Thuram lofted pass, hammered into the bottom corner to make it 2-2. Two goals in under two minutes had rewritten a final that looked finished.

Messi restored Argentina's lead in the 108th minute of extra time, but Mbappe was not done: in the 118th minute, his shot struck Gonzalo Montiel's arm, and he converted the resulting penalty to complete his hat-trick and level the match at 3-3. It was the first hat-trick scored in a World Cup final since Geoff Hurst's for England against West Germany in 1966 - only the second in the tournament's history. It was not enough. Argentina won the shootout 4-2, with Emiliano Martinez saving from Kingsley Coman and Aurelien Tchouameni missing, and Montiel scoring the winning kick.

Two finals, four goals, one win

Add the 2018 goal to the 2022 hat-trick and Mbappe has scored four times across his two World Cup finals - more than any player has ever scored in the tournament's final matches combined, ahead of the three apiece managed by Hurst, Pele, Brazil's Vava and Zinedine Zidane. He is also only the second player to score in consecutive World Cup finals, after Vava did it for Brazil in 1958 and 1962. Mbappe left Qatar with the Golden Boot too, on eight goals for the tournament, one ahead of Messi - a stat line that reads like a champion's, attached to a runner-up medal.

Career World Cup finals played

2 (2018, 2022)

Goals across both finals

4 - most by any player in World Cup final history

2018 final

France 4-2 Croatia - won, 1 goal (65')

2022 final

Argentina 3-3 France, 4-2 pens - lost, hat-trick (80' pen, 81', 118' pen)

2022 Golden Boot

8 goals, tournament's top scorer

The most goals, the wrong side of the score

There is no version of football's record books where scoring a World Cup final hat-trick and still finishing on the losing side makes intuitive sense, and Mbappe's reaction afterward reflected that. He posted a photo of himself on the pitch the following morning with a three-word message: "We will return." Within four years, that promise ran into a simpler problem than losing another final - not reaching one. France beat their way to the semi-finals of the 2026 tournament before losing 2-0 to Spain in Dallas on 14 July, ending Mbappe's run of two straight final appearances at exactly two. He will watch this year's final between Spain and Argentina from outside it, the first World Cup since his debut where he is not one win away from a second title.

We will return.

Kylian Mbappe, X (Twitter) post, 19 December 2022

What the two finals actually tell you

Judged purely on output, Mbappe's World Cup final record is essentially unmatched - a teenager's breakthrough goal in a win, then the single greatest individual final performance the tournament has produced, in a defeat decided by a shootout he didn't miss in. Judged on the only column that goes on the trophy, he is 1-1, the same record a player who never scored in either match could also have finished with. Both things are true at once, and neither cancels the other out. That is usually how it goes at this stage of a World Cup: the best individual moments and the actual result are not obligated to agree with each other, which is part of why finals get replayed in arguments for decades and why War of Soccer, the free 3D browser game that goes live the moment this year's final is decided, exists to let anyone rerun a final and see if the header count can produce a different scoreline than the one Mbappe actually got in 2022.

Where his record stands now

Two teenagers have scored in a World Cup final: Pele in 1958, Mbappe in 2018. Two men have scored a hat-trick in one: Hurst in 1966, Mbappe in 2022. Nobody has scored more than Mbappe's four goals across finals, and only Vava, across 1958 and 1962, had managed to score in back-to-back ones before him. None of it moved his personal final record off 1-1, and as of this July, he is watching this year's final for the first time since he broke through - Spain against Argentina at MetLife Stadium, decided without him on the pitch.