After 5 World Cup series, Lionel Messi has etched his name into football’s Hall of Fame as he is now a World Cup title holder.
In a fantasy football matchup that is Argentina vs France, respective stars of the teams showed up and fought for the World Cup as if it was their last match in their careers.
Luckily for the retiring Lionel Messi, his Argentina team outlasted Kylian Mbappé and his back-to-back championship seeking French squad to clinch the 2022 World Cup title.
For his fifth and final World Cup finals appearance, Messi opened the scoring of the match from a penalty kick midway through the first half before Angel Di Maria doubled Argentina's lead at the 36th minute via a counter-attack, reported PhilStar.
After a dominating first half for the Argentinians, Mbappé took the game in his hands to score two consecutive goals in a span of 1.5 minutes with a converted penalty at the 80th minute and an equalizer not long after to come back in the game and threatened Argentina’s victory.
After 90 minutes and another eight minutes were added to the clock, the score stood still and forced an extra time to decide the match.
Messi, with an added motivation, scored his second goal of the match, converting a rebound in the 109th minute, only for Mbappe to net another penalty, bringing the game level at 3-3 and becoming the second man to score a World Cup final hat-trick after Geoff Hurst for England in 1966.
The title then boiled down to a shootout where Messi and Mbappé scored for their respective teams before Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez stole the spotlight for saving Kingsley Coman’s penalty while Aurelien Tchouameni fired wide to give Gonzalo Montiel the winning kick as reported by Inquirer.
Messi, 35, in his record 26th World Cup match, finally became a World Champion at the cost of the emerging French team headed by the young superstar Mbappé, to cast his name among the greats of football.
Tags: #WorldCup, #Messi, #Football