It was absolutely thrilling. There is no doubt that the best two teams in the competition by far got to the final and it did not disappoint.
The officials are often not given credit, but the Polish referee in charge, Szymon Marciniak, was outstanding. I know the new rule about letting play flow has been controversial, but the referee gave a clear demonstration of how great football can look when you understand the game; he was a player himself before becoming a referee and it showed. In the second half, the French went down twice in the penalty area with two challenges that at full speed looked very similar. Without any doubts or hesitation he instantly gave the first as a penalty to the French and the second he gave a yellow card to the French player for simulation. After several replays from multiple angles he clearly got both right, but keeping your cool whilst having to make those kind of decisions in real time in such an important game was impressive.
I think that Argentina had the slight edge, but the French were exceptional and it could have gone either way. However, once it got to penalties, I knew that Argentina were going to win. Their track record in penalty shootouts is second to none. Before the match today they had won five out of six that have taken place at world cup matches. I cannot imagine how Kylian Mbappé must be feeling. There can’t be many games where you score a hatrick and you don’t win the match.
Both teams have brought great pride to their nations.
Don’t think football fans would like similar duration like in tennis matches. They would badly need to piss away all the beer they have in them not to mention too much suspense might give someone a heart attack
Well I’m just trying to split the baby. Golden goal didn’t fly well with fans, but overtime plus penalty kicks isn’t flying well either. Take overtime normal then golden goal. It’s like the NFL. Sudden death didn’t work and they can’t play endlessly bc of the recovery time needed so they went to modified sudden death and it’s worked pretty well for a couple years.
Players get exhausted man. Consider last night, anyone who fell down after 110’ took a longer-than-expected while to stand up again; and Varane didn’t stand back to play at all.
Making it any longer than 120 (+130 with the ETs) even with golden goal would be physically harsh to them.
They tried it and it was generally agreed that it had the opposite intended effect. It caused teams to play more defensively and was not much fun to watch. Plus, as Hichkas said, the intensity at which they play means that players are fatigued, get sloppy, and it then becomes a fitness competition. Keep in mind that football players run between 7-10 miles on average during the 90 minutes and most of that involves sprints.
As a citizen of country which lost two EUROs due to both the Golden and Silver Goal rules (and won its only title after penalties), I do not want to see any of that shit again, ever
I guess I’m one of those guys who after 21 innings of baseball says keep playing and let god sort it out. I get why you don’t want to do that mid season but it’s the final! If it goes overtime 3 let players return to the pitch who already came off or give them more subs. The penalty kicks are super exhilarating to watch but it’s not really the game. Oh well. I’m sure if there was an obvious fix they would have figured it out by now. I feel bad for the goalie.
I think prior to the 1970s they just kept playing overtime after overtime until they had a winner (no golden goal rule). I wonder if tv had any input on the changes but I wasn’t around back then so I don’t know lol.
Edit: it took a while to dig this up and of all places I found it on the Olympics website , but apparently the rules were non standard before the 1970s and so sometimes they replayed the game and or had overtimes, but other times they flipped a coin or drew lots (which is nonsense lol).
Mbappe will have his chance next time. And next after next.
As for Messi, it was his last chance.
At least I hope his figure won’t replace Jesus’ now in all the chuches all around the world and people won’t make him the saintest of all the saints
