The finale of justice – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/17/2022

Sunday’s World Cup final in Qatar is that rare case when you can’t give even a tiny advantage to any of the participants in the main football match in advance, and any of its outcomes will seem quite fair. The national teams of France and Argentina have everything – experienced and still relevant problems, the amount of talent and tone concentrated in the leaders – approximately equally, and only some nuances that acquire tremendous importance in such situations can break the parity. It is they who will make one of the two chic teams a three-time world champion.

The World Championship in Qatar, which in four weeks managed to sparkle with a scattering of various interesting events – the crushing falls of the giants and the ups of those whom no one bet on – was definitely terribly lucky with the final match. Of course, teams that are completely unworthy of such an honor never reach the finals of the main tournaments, but in the vast majority of the finals of the previous ones there was a fairly clear division of their participants into a favorite who seemed to honestly deserve gold, and an outsider – a tough one, but still not associated with such a title, too significant, too binding. Logic has not always dominated these matches, but in the previous decade it has consistently prevailed. In 2010, in South Africa, the Spaniards, who were at the peak of their power, defeated the Dutch in the final. In 2014, in Brazil, having matured to such a state that even relative weakness cannot be determined even with a microscope, the Germans beat the Argentines. Finally, in 2018, the French, sparkling with passion and power, defeated the Croats, who were perceived rather as impudent upstarts, in the Moscow Luzhniki Stadium.

But Sunday’s match at the Lusail stadium has a very special poster in this sense. She announces the cutting of two teams, from which, no matter how hard you try, you will not choose a more “correct” champion. Including from the point of view of the highest football justice.

For those who are not indifferent to the Argentina national team, its unconditional triumph will be finally obtained by Lionel Messi at the end of his career, after four unsuccessful attempts, the most valuable title in sports, the only one that he lacks in his track record, so as not just to be called the best without reservations football player of the century, but confidently, not shy of comparisons, to stand next to the kings of football of all time – Pele and Diego Maradona. Moreover, in order to get the title, Messi has already done so many good things in Qatar that for the sake of him at 35 he played like he had never played in his life, at the same time inspiring all his partners with his mood and insights, forcing them to rise above own ceiling. And you can’t argue with the fact that this is a beautiful and exceptionally correct story.

For those who love the French national team, such a celebration will be a repetition by a team that, under the guidance of coach Didier Deschamps, moved forward for several years until it turned into a standard football team that knows how to unite for big goals, who knows how to laugh in the face of fate that still slips all sorts of nasty things who knows how to make individual talents still hidden behind a thick curtain bloom within himself, that trick that no one has been able to pull off for a long time.

The current World Cup is the 22nd in a row. And so far, only two cases have been recorded when the team, having won the gold of the World Championship, defended the title at the next one. The first was the Italian team, which won the world championships in 1934 and 1938, the second was the Brazilian team, which climbed to the top of the football hierarchy in both 1958 and 1962. Exactly six decades have passed since then. And this is a real phenomenon, a real anomaly, that none of the champions managed to defend the title in such a long period of time. In the end, we are talking about the giants, the great teams. There are only two examples of how a champion even reaches the final in 60 years, just like the triumphant championship mini-series. And both are connected with the participants of the Qatari final. The Argentina national team tried to keep the status in 1990, but lost to the Germans, and the French team did not allow the Brazilians to keep it in 1998.

Also, by the way, something like a sign. It is not clear, however, in whose favor – the Argentines or the French, who, as their fans probably believe, doubly deserved to join the co-owners of the ancient record also because such suffering, which fell to their lot in the past weeks, such steadfastness with which they were welcomed, should be rewarded. The French national team lost leading players – Karim Benzema, Ngolo Kante, Paul Pogba – before the World Cup and continued to lose them during the tournament, losing first Luc Hernandez, and already before the semi-final – sick Dayot Upamecano and Adrien Rabiot. Such personnel troubles should have forced anyone to give up. And the French did not pay any attention to them. Isn’t it a beautiful and exceptionally correct story?

Well, after all, the Argentine fans will say that their suffering is no easier than the French. Starting at the World Cup with a defeat from the Saudi Arabia national team in a failed game could kill anyone. After him, the Argentina national team pulled itself out of the quagmire, returning both faith in its capabilities and the game. The perfect championship path. A path that must be crowned with a trophy that celebrates all that is great about football.

In this dispute, of course, will delve into matters and more mundane. And again to discover that no one here has even a tiny advantage.

Each team has a leader with a unique gift, and their PSG teammates can easily imagine the confrontation as one of the most important components of the final. The leader of the Argentines, Lionel Messi, who does not yet have a world title, has already won seven Golden Balls and, apparently, is rushing to the eighth in Qatar. The leader of the French, Kylian Mbappe, is eager for the second championship title and the first Golden Ball, but if in the future, after Messi left the stage, he doesn’t take a couple more, everyone will be very surprised, given how beautiful he is in his only 23. And the statistics emphasize the identity of their Qatari tone. Messi and Mbappe each have five goals scored, and in terms of assists, the Frenchman’s lag behind the Argentine is ephemeral – two to three.

Each national team has players who, as it were, have been rediscovered by this championship. In the Argentina national team, for example, Emiliano Martinez and Enzo Fernandez, who suddenly appeared as a real frontman of the goalkeeping profession and the ideal of a discreet but fantastically useful midfielder, in the French team, reanimated at 36 the outstanding goalscoring abilities of Olivier Giroud and Antoine Griezmann, who, being by vocation a creator from the front edge, suddenly retrained into a monster rushing all over the field: you can’t pick up a suitable role for him.

Everyone has problems, and they are roughly from the same area. Most are concentrated in the backcourt. Everything is quite subtle there, and the “dry” scores of the semi-final matches – the Argentines against the Croats, and the French against the Moroccans – should not be taken as a sign that the problems have been finally and irrevocably resolved. However, their presence only adds pepper to the finale: it is unlikely to be insipid.

Yes, in the end, even purely stylistically, in terms of playing philosophy, despite the small differences in the schemes, these teams are similar. In fact, there is nothing strange about it. Argentine mentor Lionel Scaloni took over the national team in 2018, after the World Cup in Russia. On it, the Argentina national team went down to the 1/8 finals, colliding just with the French who were making their ascent. Formally, she suffered a defeat – 3:4 – in the fight, but the score did not reflect reality at all: that match, on the contrary, was an excellent illustration of the advancement of the French team against the backdrop of Argentine archaism. And already at his first press conference as the coach of the national team, Scaloni, not at all ashamed, announced that his goal was to teach his team to play the way the world champions played: not in viscous football “from possession”, but such, to constantly look ahead, so that “the interception of the ball was followed by a kick three or four seconds later.”

Remembering this, people who love the French will probably grin maliciously: not a bad idea, but a copy is never more beautiful than the original. And people who love the national team, which intends to overthrow the reigning champions, probably console themselves with the fact that there are little things that speak in its favor. Well, let’s say, an extra day of rest after the semi-final stage, doubly significant due to the extremely compressed schedule of the Qatari championship and due to the fact that, whatever one may say, for the Argentines their semi-final turned out to be much less energy-intensive than the one played by the French. Little things, nuances that are conspicuous and invisible, will decide a lot in this finale.

Alexey Dospekhov