It's a Wrap on the 2022 World Cup

The 3rd Place and Championship match for the 2022 World Cup went pretty much as I expected (Croatia over Morocco for 3rd Place and Argentina over France for the championship) though I had hoped otherwise. The championship game was a classic with Argentina dominating the first 70 minutes of the match and having a 2-0 lead. It was at the 70 minute mark that France had their first shot of the match which is pretty crazy. But from that point until the end of regulation France created many opportunities and they ended up converting two of them with a penalty kick made by Mbappe and then a beautiful goal also by Mbappe. The match then went to extra time as it was 2-2 at the end of 90 minutes. Unfortunately in the extra 30 minutes France backed off and stopped playing with the intensity that got them back into the match (the exact same fate as the Netherlands against Argentina in the quarterfinals). Argentina scored around midway through the extra time to go up 3-2 and it was only then that France started pressing and with just a few minutes left in the extra time Mbappe got his third goal to tie it up 3-3. Just like the Argentina-Netherlands game the match ended tied up and went to penalty kicks and just like the previous match Argentina came out on top. It was pretty anticlimatic after such a great match but Argentina won 4-2 on PKs after France missed two of their first 4 where Argentina did not miss any.

Overall it was a great tournament and a great final with Messi (2 goals) and Mbappe (3 goals) shining the brightest in the final match. The Golden Boot award goes to the top scorer in the tournament and it went back and fourth between the two of them multiple times during the match until the very end when Mbappe got his final goal which put him at 8 goals in the tournament compared to the 7 that Messi got. So Mbappe got the Golden Boot but Messi got the bigger prize with the World Cup championship trophy (the first in his career) as well as the Golden Ball for the most oustanding player in the tournament.