What do you want from an all-time classic football match?
Goals in abundance? Check. Comebacks? Check. Spectacular finishes? Check. A breakout performance, maybe? Check. Drama to the very end? Check, check, check. It’s fair to say France v Argentina at the 2018 World Cup had it all.
And I was there in Kazan living every moment of it. How special was it? It was the greatest game I’ve ever been to.
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In a tournament full of quality, this was the standout match. Lionel Messi was brilliant in his continued quest to drag an underperforming Argentina through to the latter stages of the World Cup in Russia. Kylian Mbappe – making his biggest splash yet on the world stage – was utterly phenomenal.
For the three sets of supporters – the French, the Argentinians and the locals alike – this was a game they will never forget. And neither will I.
I was really fortunate with the games I landed back in 2018. My base in Kazan gave me the opportunity to see France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Belgium and Argentina over my three-week stay, but nobody could have anticipated quite how brilliant the round of 16 encounter would be.
It was the afternoon on which Mbappe was transported into superstardom. He won the first goal, driving at the heart of the Argentina defence at pace then sprinting beyond Marcos Rojo only to be pulled to the ground by the flailing centre-back. Antoine Griezmann netted from the spot and France looked set already.
But on the stroke of half-time Angel di Maria hit a beautiful shot from distance which had Hugo Lloris beaten from the moment it had left the boot, and shortly after the interval a Messi strike was toe-poked home by Gabriel Mercado. Argentina, easily the second-best of the two teams going into the fixture, were ahead.
France upped the tempo though, and Benjamin Pavard scored the goal of his life, hitting a wonderful effort off the outside of his foot which curled just beyond the despairing dive of Franco Armani and inside the far post. That’s when Mbappe took over.
First he shifted the ball in behind Mercado and darted into the space to send a shot under Armani’s dive, then he took Olivier Giroud’s perfect pass in his stride to side-foot home his second goal of the game. Yet just when the tie seemed to have been settled Argentina had arguably their best spell of the tournament, throwing everything at the French defence in a bid to salvage something.
Sergio Aguero headed home from Messi’s perfect cross to make it 4-3, and then Di Maria had a great chance to equalise with a side-foot volley in the dying seconds but he couldn’t get a clean enough contact to force extra-time. An utterly nuts game of football had left both sides absolutely drained.
Journalists too! There’s a trope which runs through the world of writers, who hate to see late goals or shifting narratives since it makes full-time pieces far more unpredictable and untimely. But that afternoon could have gone on forever and I would have lapped it up. It was everything you could possibly want from a World Cup clash and more. Two giants of the sport duking it out on the greatest stage and neither taking a backward step.
Outside after the game I recorded a video which basically became a soliloquy talking up the brilliance of Mbappe, then when I went to gauge the reaction of the fans the Argentines were a mix of disconsolate and plain angry. Thousands of blue and white shirts with Messi’s name and number on the back were seen drifting off into the distance on slumped shoulders. It seemed as though it could be the last sighting of the number 10 at a World Cup.
But on Sunday he’s back at a final eight years on from Germany in Rio de Janeiro, and faces France once more four years after that thriller in Kazan. If the two teams can serve up anything close to the same sort of affair it will be the greatest World Cup final ever.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
