There are players who are not going to return from this game.
They will stay there, at the end of the century.
Names that will follow their career, win titles, experience extraordinary emotions, but nothing, ever, compared to what they went through on a soccer field for more than two hours in Doha, Qatar, on December 18, 2022. It will be the match of their lives, the moment they will refer to when they look back: I played Argentina-France on 22. "I took a penalty."
"I was the one who took Messi's goal from within."
"I came out in the second part."
There will be those who, when they are 80 years old, do not need to introduce themselves.
There will be an old man, in a bar in Buenos Aires, who does not have the need to say: "I saved a goal at the last minute, and then a penalty, and I almost saved the rest."
An old man, on a terrace in Paris, who does not need to say, to introduce himself,
an impressive phrase: "I scored three goals in that final, and a penalty in the shoot-out, and I lost."
And even one more, in Rosario, that you don't have to drop when you get to a place: "They say I'm bigger than Diego Maradona."
They will give them the same face, if they say so, as the boy in the Sorrentino movie to whom Maradona clarifies that he is left-handed: "The whole planet knows that you are left-handed!"
Qatar, the World Cup of shame achieved with bribery and corruption by a regime that crushes human rights and enslaved workers, thousands of them dead, to build the stadiums, left a dream match, an impossible final, the best of the history of the Cup. And this is, in short, football.
He has no feelings, and provokes them all.
In such a beastly way that the first part of Angelito Di María, Scaloni's surprise in the eleven to undo Koundé and melt France, seems like it was a fortnight ago.
Unbalancing hero of the game, lizard tail, fine in feints and overflow, at the end of the game no one remembered if Di María had played, who was Di María? Is there someone named like that? And who is this lady who call me "son"?
All because of a player out of his mind, deranged and captivating who, in three minutes, tied a final that had no more history.
Messi had already scored, the typical beautiful move had already taken place, a counterattack executed with the speed and coldness of a murder, Sunday was already scheduled, 10 more minutes and go for a walk before going to the cinema to see a movie with your partner, then you will have to have a conversation, things are not good lately, maybe you have to separate for a while.
Two minutes, two goals, the last anthology, the shot of the beast.
An extension.
Another goal from Messi, now yes, let's get dressed that we arrive at the cinema, there are two minutes left until it ends.
Another goal from Mbappé, wait, we better stay, we can ask a Chinese and see something on Filmin,
Argentina already has its third World Cup.
Deserved, who knew it two weeks ago.
Messi threw his team on his back when he passed out in slow motion in the group stage against Mexico, and then he already scored in the round of 16, in the quarterfinals, in the semifinals, and scored a double in the final.
Messi ended in Qatar a historic discussion that lasted for years and that had to do with a divinity, Maradona.
It was actually an answer.
A response that resonated throughout the world when Messi found out how much the World Cup weighed, as Diego ordered, and whose origins go back to the rhetorical question that Maradona asked himself in front of Emir Kusturica: "Do you know which player Would it have been me if I hadn't taken cocaine? What a player!
What a player we lost!"
Messi replied to the world football legend: you would have been me.
No, no one will forget this match.
It is a giant footprint in the history of football.
He confronted styles, vintage players separated by 12 years, Messi and Mbappé, and gave, on several occasions, a lesson that is the engine of history: things are never quite right, everything can go wrong at any time, twist does not have to be bad either, but go through life, fool, with a good goalkeeper.
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