We hear so much in football about the importance of the team but this World Cup final was billed as the clash of two players who long ago outgrew their team-mates.
Lionel Messi has struggled and struggled in the national shirt until the appointment of Lionel Scaloni as manager in 2019. The Copa America followed. Now, Messi is a World Cup winner.
His final match after five World Cups delivered the glory. It also delivered drama. One of the great finals saw Messi as a winner, then it didn’t, then it did again, then it didn’t again, then it did.
But France looked to have all the aces ahead of the final. As well as danger man Kylian Mbappe, they had one of the very best players in the tournament in Antoine Griezmann, plus their new record goalscorer Olivier Giroud and Barcelona’s Ousmane Dembele.
Yet it didn’t work out like that.
Football rarely does – and this is why we love it so much.
Argentina, it turned out, had the stronger supporting cast and that got Messi to world champion level. Everywhere you looked was Alexis Mac Allister for instance.
Brighton will no doubt find interest has grown in their midfield maestro when the January transfer window opens.
Julian Alvarez showed he is more than just Erling Haaland’s understudy. And Angel Di Maria, restored to the team for the greatest stage of all, displayed that at 34 he can still affect the biggest matches.
The move for the sublime, killer second goal said it all. Messi’s touch into Alvarez, his pass setting Mac Allister free and then a lovely ball into the path of Di Maria to roll the ball over the diving Hugo Lloris.
This felt like it could be Argentina’s day, in the same way it felt like it could be their tournament once they had rid their system of that shock opening defeat by Saudi Arabia.
Doha was awash with Argentinians from the very beginning. From India, for example, came huge support and soon the streets were full of blue and white striped shirts.
Their matches had felt like they were being played in Buenos Aires, not the Qatari desert. Lusail Iconic Stadium can hold over 88,000. The majority of those were honorary Argentinians yesterday.
This is a very different Argentina to the last time they lifted the World Cup. No Diego Maradona dominating everything they do. This was about more than just Messi.
The great man’s achievement could not have been reached without the youthful Alvarez, the mastery of Mac Allister and a sensational, unexpected cameo from Di Maria.
Even when France came back at them, and rather surprisingly took this game to extra-time, Messi couldn’t be denied.
Again, it was a less-heralded team-mate involved, as substitute Lautaro Martinez – who had seen chances come and go in the extra half-hour – forced a save from Lloris.
But the ball found its way to the little magician and it was he, on his last World Cup appearance and with international retirement beckoning, who had the final say, forcing the rebound home.
France equalised again but Messi set the tone in the shoot-out and again his colleagues did not let him down – Paula Dybala, Leandro Paredes and Gonzalo Montiel all netting in a faultless display of penalty-taking.
Of course it had to be him. But he can’t do it all on his own, not at 35. And his dream finale owes so much to the unselfishness of the players around him.
Scaloni built a team around Messi but each and every one of those players are in the superstar’s orbit. He takes the headlines but Messi will share the glory around.
MORE : Argentina thwart France comeback to win epic World Cup final on penalties
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