One of The Greatest World Cups in FIFA History
Few things unite the world, quite like the sport of soccer. The FIFA World Cup is the biggest soccer/football tournament in the world that takes place every four years. The 2022 Men’s World Cup took place in November and December 2022 and is already going down as one of the most eventful and interesting World Cups in history since it began over 90 years ago in 1930. The Tournament was held in Qatar and featured 32 participating countries from around the world. From start to finish, this tournament was full of ups and downs, keeping fans on the edge of their seats until the final moment of that last game.
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The Final: Messi vs. Mbappé
The Finals of the World Cup was between Argentina and France and might have been the most eventful part of the tournament, primarily due to two players: Lionel Messi of Argentina and Kylian Mbappé of France. The two players performed outstandingly throughout the tournament and elevated their teams to higher levels. The first goal occurred just past the 21-minute mark when Argentina’s Ángel Di María was tripped by France’s Ousmane Dembele, which awarded Argentina a penalty kick. The kick was taken by none other than Messi, who could get the ball into the bottom right corner of the net. Just 13 minutes later, at the 36-minute mark, Argentina was able to pick up another goal after Alexis Mac Allister brought the ball down to the net and, instead of shooting, passed over to Di María, who caught up to the ball, positioning him at a great angle to shoot. Di María scores bringing Argentina to a 2-0 lead! Argentina remains on top for the next long while until, in the 80th minute, France finally begins to respond. A penalty kick from Mbappé gives France their first goal of the game. Just over a minute after Mbappé’s goal, he gets a pass from his teammate Marcus Thuram and has an incredible goal kicking the ball out of the air into the back of the net. Within a few minutes, France went from being down by two to a tied game, thanks to Mbappé. After the regulation time ended, the two teams remained tied, not for Argentina’s lack of trying when Lionel Messi had a powerful shot in the last moments that was blocked by a superb diving save by France’s goaltender Hugo Lloris.
The game had to go into extra time, which remained just as eventful as the rest of the game. In the 108th minute of the match, Argentina was running down with the ball. The ball was passed between Messi, Lautaro Martinez, and Enzo Fernández before Martinez took a hard shot that the goalie Lloris fell backward to block. Unlucky for Lloris, Messi was right there to pick up the rebound and score, giving Argentina the lead again. Argentina remained on top until the 116th minute when a shot by Mbappé was illegally blocked by Argentina when it hit the arm of one of their players. Mbappé was given a penalty kick and was easily able to put it in, giving him a hat trick and tying up the game at three a piece.
For only the third time in the long history of the Men’s World Cup Finals, the game had to come down to penalty kicks. Starting with Mbappé, he scores again, putting the pressure on early. Argentina responds with Messi, who is able to score, bringing the shootout to 1:1. France then misses their next two shots, but Argentina scores them both, bringing it to 3:1 after six shots. Randal Kolo Muani got France’s second shootout goal, but it was not enough because Gonzalo Montiel scored Argentina’s fourth shootout goal giving them the win over France. The game came down to the wire, and Kylian Mbappé carried France on his back, but it was ultimately not enough to overcome Messi and Argentina’s incredible showing. Messi and Mbappé were the two titans of the tournament; Mbappé got two hat tricks and scored the most goals for a total of eight, Messi came in second with seven goals.
Highlights and Upsets
Image by Laurent Gilliéron - EPA
The finals were not the only exciting thing to come out of the 2022 Men’s World Cup; there were plenty of other monumental plays and games. The famous Christiano Ronaldo also made history in the World Cup. In Portugal’s game against Ghana, Ronaldo became the first male player in history to score in five world cup tournaments. The goal was a penalty kick in the 64th minute of the game.
One of the tournament's best goals was scored by Brazil’s Richarlison de Andrade in their game against Serbia. In his second goal of the game in the 72nd minute, Richarlison receives a pass from his teammate in the air and is able to stop the ball, sending it up above his head. Richarlison then jumps into the air to scissor-kick the ball as it soared past the goalie into the back of the net. Richarlison scored only two goals in the game as Brazil beat Serbia 2-0.
Although Argentina won, they could have had a better run. Early on, they had a huge upset loss to Saudi Arabia. In a Group C match, Argentina had an early lead over Saudi Arabia, but they were able to respond in the 48th minute to tie it up. A few minutes later, Salem Al-Dawsari dekes through Argentine defenders and rifles the ball to the back of the net to put his team ahead. Saudi Arabia remained in the lead for the rest of the game, giving Argentina a substantial early loss that should have been an easy win.
Morocco made history in the World Cup by becoming the first African team ever to reach the Semi-finals in World Cup history. In the 42nd minute, Youssef En-Nesyri had a jumping header to knock in the ball. There was only one goal in the game so that Morocco could move on to the semi-finals against France.
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The Quarterfinals seemed full of upsets as Croatia beat out Brazil after extra time in a penalty kick shootout. Brazil was the favourite to win the World Cup, yet Croatia surprised the World by keeping up with Brazil the whole game and beating them out 4-2 in the shootout.
There were many more outstanding things to come out of the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup that made this World Cup one for the history books. The World Cup was able to dominate the news cycle for over a month, but it was not all about the teams' and players' performances. The World Cup was also full of controversy and scandal like nothing before. From Qatar’s slave-like working conditions to worldwide boycotts of the tournament, there was much more going on than just soccer. Be sure to read the follow-up article about all the controversies coming out of the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup.