World Cup Final: French press claims Lionel Messi’s third goal against France should’ve been cancelled.
This claim comes after the footages revealed that there were ‘two emotional substitute’ already on the pitch before Messi scored.
Messi and Angel Di Maria gave Argentina a two-goal lead before halftime, but Argentina was pushed back when Kylian Mbappe scored twice in the space of two minutes to force overtime.
The contentious moment then occurred when Lautaro Martinez was let through on goal in the 108th minute. Hugo Lloris made a strong save on his shot, but Messi was there to score on the rebound from close range.
The goal, according to French publication L’Equipe, should have been disallowed by Polish referee Szymon Marciniak and his crew of officials.
The media outlet stated that “two emotionally charged substitutes” entered the field before Messi’s shot crossed the line, which is false, under the heading “Why Argentina’s third goal shouldn’t have been awarded.”
VAR ruled that the goal was offside, but replays revealed that Martinez had narrowly avoided going offside, setting up raucous celebrations among Argentina’s players and supporters.
It is erroneous to assume that VAR took into account substitutes entering the field because it was completely ignored.
Instead, the goal was awarded, leaving France down once more and needing to score again to force penalties.
They succeeded in doing so when Mbappe converted a penalty to clinch his hat-trick after Gonzalo Montiel blocked his shot.
Due to the requirement for penalties to determine the winner, Montiel was forced to make up for his earlier mistakes by scoring the decisive penalty after Kingsley Coman and Aurelien Tchouameni both missed their chance to do so.
France lost out on winning the World Cup and was defeated on penalties in the championship match for the second time in 16 years after falling to Italy in agonizing fashion in 2006.
However, the French media seem to believe that if Argentina’s third goal had been disallowed, Sunday’s game might not have required penalties.
Did Argentina Deserve To Win The World Cup?
The cliché that “the league table never lies,” are annoying to anyone who wants to examine the past, present, and, most importantly, the potential future.
The notion that “just the result matters” over the course of a league season is foolish since performances that don’t support the outcomes are ultimately unsustainable.
Together with the other three teams that made it to the semi-finals, they gave us the most matches to analyze (seven), which is obviously more than the extremely tiny sample size that would be required to make any kind of prognosis.
The only other teams to do so were Germany (3) and Brazil. Scaloni’s team won the xG fight in every single one of their games (5).
Argentina averaged 0.41 xGA, therefore no opponent came close to outscoring them by more than 1.0 xG, with Australia’s 0.66 in the group stage being the highest total.
Argentina had allowed more xG (a penalty always equals to 0.80) in that one action than they had in any of their previous six games, including the 120 minutes they played against the Netherlands. This was due to the penalty conceded by Nicolas Otamendi’s.
Argentina was so dominant that even at full time, the xG totals read 1.77-1.09 in their favor, with the holders only able to generate 0.29 non-penalty xG.
Although, as we watched helplessly, extra time may have seemed completely chaotic, from a non-penalty xG standpoint, Argentina once again dominated, with the South Americans creating 1.68 to France’s 0.40.
They only permitted 0.50 xGA on average over the entire competition, averaging 2.22 xGF in normal time. They consistently outperformed their competitors by a wide margin.
While Mbappe’s heroics in vain in direct rivalry with Messi’s own efforts to drive his team to victory will undoubtedly be remembered from the championship game, Emiliano Martinez finally emerged as the match’s hero, first with his save at the very last second and then in the shootout.
It should be remembered as Messi’s World Cup without a doubt. But Messi wasn’t the only reason for Argentina’s victory.
The winning team was the most effective one.
