After 12 years, shredded schedules and a whirl of geopolitics; after death, ghosts and suffering; after armbands, hard power, the Davos in the desert vibe; after 64 games of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, a purely sporting surprise was dished up.
This was the greatest Fifa World Cup final. It was also a third World Cup victory for Argentina, who beat France on penalties at the end of a wildly oscillating 3-3 draw.
More tellingly, it was also a kind of coronation, belatedly, for the greatest footballer of the age, probably of any age, the mooching 35-year-old mobile brain Lionel Messi, a thousand games into his astonishing career.
This was an emotional overload, a game that seemed to have been won at least four times over 120 minutes before it…