by Syed Mahmood Sharazi
Argentina won the World Cup trophy for the third time after 36 years defeating France by four goals on penalty kicks in the final of the Football World Cup 2022.
At the start of the match played at Lusail Stadium in Qatar, Argentina played a better game, while France showed a great performance in the second half. The match was tied with two goals at the scheduled time and went to extra time, where both France and Argentina scored one goal each to make the scoreline 3-3 at the end of extra time.
After several tries and a hard-fought 120 minutes, the match went to a penalty shoot-out to decide. Where, due to the outstanding performance of Argentina’s goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, the French players managed to throw only two of the four kicks into the goal. All four penalty kicks by Argentina went into the goal, due to which Argentina Won the trophy by four goals.
Lionel Messi scored two goals for Argentina and Angel Di Maria scored one goal while Kylian Mbappe scored three goals for France.
Kylian Mbappe’s hat-trick in Qatar’s Lucille Stadium could not give France a second consecutive victory, while Lionel Messi has won many records by playing the final of the event, including the record of playing the 26 most World Cup matches by any player. In the 82-year history of the tournament, no player has played more matches than Messi.
With this achievement, a team became world champions for the first time since 2010 after opening the event with a defeat. It happened to Spain 12 years ago and in 2022 fifa World cup Saudi Arabia beat Argentina in the first match.
With this victory, Argentina’s team has become a team that has won the trophy three times. Brazil Still holds the record for winning the World Cup the most with five times, while Italy and Germany are second after winning the trophy four times each.
Argentina has won this trophy twice before. The first time they won the World Cup was in 1978, while the second time was in 1986 under the leadership of Late Diego Maradona.
While the FIFA World Cup 2022 saw some edge-of-the-seat football action with a total of 172 goals scored in 64 matches, averaging 2.68 goals per match. It was the highest number of goals scored in a single World Cup ahead of France 1998 and Brazil 2014 editions, which saw 171 goals each.
Spain recorded the biggest win at Qatar 2022 with a 7-0 thrashing of Costa Rica in their opening group match followed by Portugal’s 6-1 win over Switzerland in the round of 16 and England’s 6-2 drubbing of Iran in the group stage.
World Cup runner-up France (16 goals) and Champion Argentina (15 goals) also led the chart of the most goals scored by teams at FIFA World Cup.
According to fifa States The first time a World Cup produced a hundred goals was at Switzerland 1954 – with 140. Since Spain 1982, all World Cups have produced at least a hundred goals. The lowest since then was 115 during Italy 1990.
Interestingly, the first two editions of the World Cup, hosted by Uruguay in 1930 and Italy in 1934, saw an identical 70 goals each.
. If we talk about scoring the highest number of goals, Kylian Mbappe of France scored the highest 8 goals in the event. He was awarded the Golden Boot, the only award that went to a player other than Argentina. Because the FIFA Young Player Award went to Argentina’s Enzo Fernandez, the Golden Glove Award went to their goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, while the Golden Ball Award went to Lionel Messi 2nd Time in his world Cup career. Messi become Ist player in fifa world cup history who won golden ball award two times. Earlier, Messi was also awarded the Golden Ball award in the 2014 World Cup.
With Messi lifting the World Cup trophy, the debate over who is the greatest player between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo seems to be over.
The victory in the FIFA World Cup is considered the pinnacle of any player and Messi, who has won the Ballon d’Or award 7 times, is the most in history, who made his national team Olympic champions, won the Copa America Cup and brought victory in the under 20 World Cup, but due to the lack of victory in the Football World Cup, this debate was always going on between the fans of the two players.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s team was eliminated after losing to Morocco in the quarter-finals, so all eyes were on Messi who will surely win the trophy this time and he proved his greatness by defeating France after a thrilling match. Has delivered and put himself in the ranks of players like Diego Maradona
and Pele.
