00:00As Lionel Messi turned to celebrate another Argentina goal, the linesman's flag went up
00:05again. Four times in the first half, Argentina put the ball in the net, and three of those times,
00:10the goals were disallowed for offside. Because the Saudi team, ranked near the very bottom of
00:16the entire tournament, had figured something out. On each Argentinian attack, Saudi Arabia's
00:21defenders were stepping forward in one perfectly straight line, all at once, the instant the ball
00:26was played. It's called an offside trap. If an attacker lingers a fraction too far forward as
00:31the pass goes, then they'll be offside, and the goal is wiped away. And with the tournament's new
00:36semi-automated offside technology, Argentinian goals were being wiped away simply by the lean of a
00:42shoulder. The Saudi tactics seemed to be aimed squarely at how Messi's Argentina played, and it
00:48worked. The whistle blew, and Argentina, the pre-tournament favourites, lost to Saudi Arabia
00:54in their first game of the 2022 World Cup. It was supposed to be Messi's final World Cup,
01:00the one where he'd finally secure the single trophy that had escaped him his entire career.
01:05So an opening match disaster wasn't exactly reassuring. Plenty of people had already written
01:10him off. They said that at 35, he no longer had the legs to drag a team through the most
01:15brutal
01:15tournament in the sport. But despite the rough start, Argentina clawed their way back. They won their
01:21remaining group matches, and in the first knockout round against Australia, Messi scored his first
01:26ever goal in a World Cup knockout match. Not too bad for someone who was apparently on their way out
01:32of the sport. However, in the lead-up to the quarterfinal against the Netherlands, during his
01:36press appearances, the Dutch manager, Louis van Gaal, resurfaced a lot of the criticisms people had
01:42for Messi, saying that he's essentially useless for his team when he's not on the ball. It was actually
01:47a similar criticism van Gaal had for one of Messi's Argentine heroes, Juan Roman Raquelme, who had been
01:53insulted and mistreated by van Gaal during his time being coached by him at Barcelona. But as the
01:59quarterfinal kicked off, in spite of the insults by the opposing manager, Messi carved open the Dutch
02:04defence to lay the first goal, and then buried a penalty for the second. And to celebrate, he jogged to
02:09the touchline, stood directly in front of van Gaal and cupped his hands behind his ears, which was
02:15Raquelme's celebration. However, the Dutch almost made Messi regret his showboating when they dragged
02:20two late goals back to force the match into extra time and then to a penalty shootout, which van Gaal
02:26had promised would certainly go the Dutch way if it were to come down to it. But Argentina managed to
02:30edge that one out too. And after sweeping past Croatia 3-0 in the semi-final, Argentina made it to
02:36the
02:37final, where after another intense penalty shootout with France, they won. Lionel Messi dropped to his
02:43knees. After five World Cups, a heartbreaking loss in the 2014 final, a cacophony of voices telling him
02:49he'd missed his opportunity, Lionel Messi's Argentina were finally World Cup champions.
