Dispatches from the present
Argentina, who started the tournament with a shocking loss to Saudi Arabia, started the final by establishing control. To a man, they played with belief, energy and purpose. From the whistle, Ángel Di María, back in the starting lineup after a slight quad injury, caused France all sorts of problems. In the 21st minute, Di María made a cutting run into the box, letting his leg trail just long enough to draw the foul and gift his longtime teammate and captain a penalty. Messi, after a long, deep breath, watched and waited patiently for Hugo Lloris to shift his weight before nonchalantly side-footing the ball into the net. Shortly afterwards, in a beautiful sequence that flowed through Messi, Di María scored. Tears of joy for Di María; ecstasy for all of Argentina. Finally, Messi would claim his rightful throne.
The defending champions appeared to have no response: France looked enervated, almost absent. Perhaps the virus that had reportedly spread through their ranks really had brought them low. Antoine Griezmann, who had been spectacular all tournament, looked totally out of ideas. Olivier Giroud barely touched the ball. Mbappé, the player the media had declared Messi’s heir and challenger, seemed to have vanished. Perhaps this French team were finally missing their injured superstars: Karim Benzema, Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kante. Didier Deschamps, in a bold if desperate attempt to retake control, made two substitutions before halftime.
Nothing seemed to work for France, until it did. With barely ten minutes left, the Argentinian defender Nicolás Otamendi took down Randal Kola Muani in the box and gave Mbappé a chance to level Messi in the race for the Golden Boot. Mbappé’s penalty grazed goalie Emi Martínez’s fingers, but it made its way to the bottom left corner. Newly animated, as if the goal had injected him with the confidence and energy he had lacked for the first sixty or so minutes, Mbappé rushed past the goalkeeper to collect the ball and quickly restart the game. Less than two minutes later, after a brilliant one-two with Marcus Thuram, he hit a spectacular volley into the back of the net.
What on earth was happening? The crowd was astonished; the commentators momentarily speechless; the Argentinians shell-shocked. Each time the camera cut to Emmanuel Macron, the frenzied French president seemed to have removed one more item of clothing. At one point, I worried that we were a few minutes away from him ripping off his shirt to reveal the Tricolore painted on his bare chest.
The thirty minutes of extra time followed the same narrative arc as the initial ninety: the first half was ordinary, the second half extraordinary. In the 108th minute, Messi scored again—a messy, scrambling goal. Mbappé, with preposterous stubbornness, simply refused to accept defeat. Ten minutes later he rocketed a ball toward the goal and it caught the elbow of Gonzalo Montiel, up for penalty number two. In the second half of added time, the 23-year-old became the second player in history to score a hat trick in the World Cup final. Often, Mbappé gives off an air of nonchalance—he looks bored by the whole affair, until the ball falls to his feet and he takes off with electric speed—but for a short spell on Sunday, lackadaisical Mbappé transformed into Mamba-mentality Mbappé. He played like a man possessed. Was he actually going to ruin Messi’s coronation?
This dispatch is an excerpt from Tara Menon’s essay, “The King of Cups.” Read the rest here.