Qatar 2022: football's greatest final, Messi's World Cup and Spain's penalty heartbreak
- Argentina won the most thrilling World Cup final in history against France in an epic battle that was decided on penalties
- Lionel Messi won his first world title, fulfilling the dream that was missing from his sporting career
- Spain was eliminated in the group stage without managing to score any penalty, a negative historic record for the Spanish national team
Everything surrounding this World Cup was debatable, yet it delivered the best football match anyone can remember. Both sides of the story need telling.
🇶🇦 The 2022 World Cup in numbers
- Host
- Qatar
- Teams
- 32
- Champions
- 🏆 Argentina
- Runners-up
- France
- Final
- Argentina 3-3 (4-2 pens.) France
- Stadium
- Lusail Iconic Stadium · Lusail
- Attendance
- 88,966
- Top scorer
- Kylian Mbappé (France), 8 goals
A winter World Cup
Qatar in June hits temperatures above 45 degrees, so the tournament moved to November and December. It's the only World Cup never played during the Northern Hemisphere summer, and it forced every league in the world to pause mid-season.
The awarding of the host nation, voted on in 2010, sits at the heart of FIFA's biggest institutional crisis: several of the officials who voted ended up investigated or banned for corruption in other cases. FIFA has never annulled that vote.
And then there's the workers issue. Qatar built eight stadiums and an entire city with migrant labourers under the kafala system, which bound workers to their employers. The death toll figures in circulation range from official dozens to several thousands according to journalistic investigations, using very different methodologies and major debate over which deaths to count. What isn't in doubt: conditions were denounced for years by Amnesty International and the ILO, and Qatar only partially reformed the kafala system under pressure from the tournament.
Spain eliminated without scoring a penalty
Spain beat Costa Rica 7-0 in their opener, drew with Germany, and lost 2-1 to Japan. In the Round of 16 they faced Morocco: 0-0 after 120 minutes and a penalty shootout.
Sarabia missed. Soler missed. Busquets missed. Spain didn't score a single one of their three penalties. It's the only team in World Cup history to be eliminated from a shootout without scoring even one.
Morocco went on to reach the semi-finals: the first African and Arab team to do so.
The greatest final ever
December 18th, Lusail. For eighty minutes it was all Argentina: 2-0, a Messi penalty and a worldie from Di María. France hadn't even had a shot on goal.
Then, in 97 seconds, Mbappé scored twice — penalty and volley — to make it 2-2. In extra time Messi made it 3-2; Mbappé equalized from the penalty spot again, 3-3, completing the first hat-trick in a final since 1966. And in the shootout, with Emiliano Martínez pulling off heroics in goal, Argentina won.
Messi lifted the Cup at 35 years old, in his fifth World Cup and in his last ever match in one. He'd lost the 2014 final and retired from international duty in 2016 before returning. It's probably the most perfect career finale this sport has ever seen.
Two conflicting figures circulate: Qatar's official count of around dozens of deaths "work-related", and the 6,500 deaths published by The Guardian in 2021.
That both are true and measure different things, which is why the discussion gets so toxic. The 6,500 figure covers all deaths of migrant workers from five South Asian countries recorded in Qatar between 2010 and 2020, from any cause, not just World Cup construction sites. The official count only includes accredited workplace accidents at stadiums. Neither answers the real question, because Qatar didn't investigate most deaths from natural causes among young workers, making it impossible to know how many resulted from heat stroke or exhaustion. What is documented without dispute are working conditions, reported by Amnesty International and the ILO, and the partial reform of the kafala system that came from international pressure.
That the hosting rights were secured through bribes and that it's proven.
That the 2010 vote sits at the heart of the scandal that brought down FIFA's leadership — several of the voters ended up banned or prosecuted, though in many cases for offences linked to other competitions — and that there were investigations by the US Department of Justice and FIFA itself. But there is no court ruling annulling that election or declaring the hosting rights bought, and FIFA has never revoked it. It's a case with plenty of documented smoke but no concrete conviction that would close the matter.
That the 2022 Argentina-France match is, objectively, the best game ever played.
That it's an opinion, though widely shared, and worth saying so. The objective arguments in its favour are strong: six goals, a two-goal comeback in 97 seconds, another comeback in extra time, the first hat-trick in a final since 1966 and a nail-biting penalty shootout. But "the greatest ever" competes with Bern's 3-2 or the 1982 Seville semi-final, and that's a matter of taste and how old you were.
What remained
Argentina's third star remained, thirty-six years after Maradona's. Morocco in the semi-finals remained, which weighs more on the world football map than it seemed at the time. And the last 32-team World Cup remained: the next one would be something else entirely.
- On worker death figures: this explains what each figure measures rather than picking the most shocking or convenient one.
- The final photos are from photographers with Creative Commons licenses, via Wikimedia Commons.
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