2022 World Cup Final: Argentina 3–3 France

The last thing Lionel Messi did not have

By 18 December 2022 the argument about Lionel Messi had narrowed to a single hole. He had four Champions Leagues, seven Ballons d'Or, more goals than any sane accounting of a career should allow, and one World Cup Final already lost — Rio de Janeiro, 2014, beaten by Germany with the trophy sitting on a plinth he had to walk past on his way off the pitch. He had lost two Copa America finals to Chile after that, the second on penalties, and briefly quit international football because of it.

Then he came back, and in 2021 he won the Copa America at the Maracana — Argentina's first senior title since 1993. Qatar was his fifth World Cup. He was 35. The final at Lusail Stadium was his 26th World Cup match, one more than Lothar Matthaus had ever played, a record broken on the only night it could have mattered less to him.

It nearly never happened. Argentina had arrived in Qatar on a 36-match unbeaten run and lost their opening game 2-1 to Saudi Arabia, at this same stadium, in what remains one of the great World Cup upsets. Messi scored a tenth-minute penalty; Saleh Al Shehri and Salem Al Dawsari scored in five second-half minutes and the run was gone. Argentina then won six matches in a row, including a shootout against the Netherlands, and never lost again.

The champions who arrived half-assembled

France were defending champions chasing something nobody had managed since Brazil in 1958 and 1962: back-to-back World Cups. They were doing it without most of the spine they had planned on. Paul Pogba's knee and N'Golo Kante's hamstring ruled them out before the squad was even named. Christopher Nkunku was hurt in training and replaced by a 23-year-old called Randal Kolo Muani. Karim Benzema — the reigning Ballon d'Or winner — tore a thigh muscle in his first full session in Qatar. Lucas Hernandez ruptured a cruciate ligament in the opening match.

Then, in the last week, a virus went through the camp. Adrien Rabiot and Dayot Upamecano missed the semi-final against Morocco. Two days before the final, ESPN reported that five players had sat out training, including both first-choice centre-backs, Raphael Varane and Ibrahima Konate. Didier Deschamps blamed the air conditioning and the accumulated effort. Both centre-backs started the final anyway.

Eighty minutes of one team

For an hour and a bit, this was not a contest. Lionel Scaloni set Argentina up in a 4-3-3 that overloaded France's midfield and pinned the world champions inside their own half for stretches that became embarrassing. The pressure point was the left: Alexis Mac Allister pushed high to occupy Jules Kounde, Nicolas Tagliafico's runs dragged Ousmane Dembele backwards, and Angel Di Maria — recalled specifically for this — was left one-against-one over and over again.

It broke on 23 minutes. Dembele, chasing Di Maria into the box, fouled him. Messi took the penalty and put it away. On 36, Argentina broke through the middle in four passes and Di Maria finished left-footed — a goal that was less a moment than a diagram of everything the first half had been. France had not managed a shot on target.

On 41 minutes, before half-time in a World Cup Final, Deschamps took off Olivier Giroud and Dembele and sent on Kolo Muani and Marcus Thuram. Managers do not do this.

If I made those changes so early, it's because I was not satisfied and I felt convinced we could do better.

Didier Deschamps, quoted by Goal

It did not work for another forty minutes. France reshaped into something close to a 4-2-4 with Mbappe central, and still Argentina held them. Di Maria, his job done, came off on 64. And then, on 80 minutes, Nicolas Otamendi caught Kolo Muani in the box, and Kylian Mbappe put the penalty low to the left.

Ninety-seven seconds later it was 2-2. Kingsley Coman won the ball off Messi, France broke, Thuram lofted it over the top, and Mbappe hit a volley on the turn from the edge of the area that a 23-year-old should not be able to hit in the 81st minute of a World Cup Final.

The longest half hour in football

Extra time should have settled it twice. On 108, Lautaro Martinez forced a save out of Hugo Lloris and Messi bundled in the rebound — 3-2, and Argentina were champions again. On 118, Mbappe's shot struck Gonzalo Montiel's raised arm. Penalty. Mbappe scored it, and became only the second man ever to score a hat-trick in a World Cup Final, after Geoff Hurst at Wembley in 1966. Hurst won his. Mbappe was about to lose.

There were fifteen seconds left when a loose ball dropped to Kolo Muani at the edge of the box with nobody near him. He shot low and hard to Emiliano Martinez's right. Martinez spread himself and blocked it with his left shin. That is the whole margin. Had it gone in, France win 4-3 in the last action of the game and Messi's career ends the way it began ending in Rio.

The shootout was almost anticlimactic, which is to say it was Martinez's. Mbappe scored. Messi scored. Martinez saved from Coman — after delaying him by arguing with Szymon Marciniak, and having already been booked for what he was doing to Kolo Muani. Paulo Dybala scored. Aurelien Tchouameni pulled his wide. Leandro Paredes scored. Kolo Muani scored. And then Gonzalo Montiel — the man whose arm had given away the goal that forced the shootout in the first place — stepped up and won the World Cup.

The match was completely insane... He would have been the first person on the field to celebrate. I wish he'd have been here.

Lionel Scaloni on Diego Maradona, via ESPN

What the night settled, and what it didn't

Argentina got their third star, 36 years after Maradona's at the Azteca, and moved clear of France and Uruguay on two. They were the first South American winners since Brazil in 2002 and the first reigning Copa America holders ever to follow it with the World Cup. Messi took a second Golden Ball, the only player to win it twice. Mbappe took the Golden Boot with eight and became the first man to score three in a final and finish on the losing side.

Two days later an estimated four million people came onto the streets of Buenos Aires and the open-top bus could not move; the squad had to be lifted out by helicopter. Messi's photograph with the trophy became the most-liked post in the history of social media. Around 1.5 billion people had watched the match.

Golden Ball

Lionel Messi (2nd, after 2014)

Golden Boot

Kylian Mbappe, 8 goals

Golden Glove

Emiliano Martinez

Best Young Player

Enzo Fernandez

Tournament goals

172 — a World Cup record

Argentina's titles

3rd (1978, 1986, 2022)

What it did not settle was the obvious thing. Deschamps was right that his team came back from the dead, and France left Qatar as the better story about resilience and the worse one about luck.

We didn't do the right things for an hour, but then with a lot of courage, energy and quality, we pushed Argentina to the limit.

Didier Deschamps, quoted by Goal

Nineteen months later Argentina won the Copa America again. Four years later they are back in a World Cup Final — Spain, at MetLife Stadium, on 19 July 2026 — as holders, with a 39-year-old Messi playing the last World Cup match of his life. Qatar answered the question of whether he would ever win one. It did not answer whether he can do it twice. You can read every final since 1930 here, and when the 2026 final is decided you can go and play the thing yourself in War of Soccer.