The 2022 World Cup final was glorious with a dream scenario, but's end imposed more questions than it had answered.

It may sound like something too early to say, or that it is simply not the time to read it, but, in my opinion, that's what makes it the right time to say it. To understand why I am writing this series I must take you all back a few days, within an hour after Argentina won the World Cup.

I am an Arsenal, as you may know, my father supports Barcelona, as even fewer people may know, I love Messi and I sympathize with Argentina as you may know. The winning was crazy, that's something even people not supporting either side could agree on. In fact, I saw many people who didn't care starting to care as the match unfolded. But, after Argentina won, my honest-to-God feeling was... Silliness. It was a feeling that lacked any meaning. I had one question in mind:

Is This Really What We've Been Waiting For Throughout The Last 12 Years?

If you're reading this post, you likely are waiting for the Premier League's return tomorrow and you've already probably watched Manchester City vs Liverpool face each other in a crazy match that really exceeded the quality of any World Cup match we saw this. If you've been gloating then enough time has passed to make you full, if you've been then ranting then enough time has passed to calm you down. Point is, life is back to normal.

Now that life is back to normal, allow me to ask a question, was Messi's performance in the final, which is easily his best performance in a final with Argentina, the performance the world has been waiting to give Messi the certification of success? I think, yes. People were waiting for Messi to score in the final, even if his team was to lose. It would have been enough of a redemption, just like Mbappe redeemed himself by scoring a hat trick despite losing.

But, logically, that's obviously nonsense. I could, off the top of my head, name at least 100 matches where Messi played better than he had in the final. This comes despite him scoring two goals, and creating a lot of chances, even his defensive work was good, unlike the previous games. Even when taking age into consideration, Messi had better matches. He had better matches with Argentina and taking into consideration France's sub-par performance, he had better matches against better opponents.

Is the idea about the performance? No, the idea is very simple and has been staring us in the face the whole time:

The Trophy

Ever since the beginning of humanity, men have been obsessed with trophies. Trophies are meant to be physical proof of a man's status and value. That always existed since the dawn of humanity. However, it never made a lot of sense.

Anthropology scientists believe that sport is the modern-day replacement for war. Instead of killing each other, we could just play sports. Instead of enforcing our superiority by insulting someone's race, colour, origin, or gender, we enforce it by insulting their club or national team. It's like racism, but harmless. That's the modern-day sense of belonging, defeat, and victory, in a deathless tribalistic sense.

Anthropology scientists also use that to explain males' obsession with trophies, in whatever shape they may come from any victory. This goes all the way back to when men started hunting animals. Males' behaviour differed when hunting from females.

A male would aim to hunt the biggest and most dangerous animal. It often meant the animal might be too big for a family to eat, and most of it would be even thrown out. It meant that many times men would return empty-handed, or even death as the animal would be either too big or dangerous. So logically, it makes no sense to do that. The same can be said about judging Messi or anyone based on the World Cup.

Women, on the other hand, would just gather the food they needed to survive, whether by obtaining fruit or killing small animals they could kill easily. It made more sense as those were the essentials.

Women kill for survival, men kill to prove their high status. So, who is that man? Well, he's the man who killed the lion. That's why, when men kill an animal, they'd often bring back horns, teeth, fur, head, or anything that would prove they killed that dangerous or big animal. Such an old mentality is carried on until today, hence, teams who win the Champions League or the World Cup have a number of how many times they won it stitched to the side of the jersey, or in the World Cup case, a crest of it in the middle, or stars above the logo.

That's simply what happened, Messi and Co. hunted an elephant, killed a lion, and won the World Cup. Stop for a second and imagine that the biggest compliment Messi got was that he "completed football", which is empty words when you remember the kind of performance which led to it. But, that's another topic for tomorrow.

In Conclusion

Here's a quote from my post about how football styles are affected by the country's politics, economy, and geography

During the World Cup in 1976 in Argentina, journalists asked the people "What do you think about the effect of political events on football?", many people didn't understand the question as they saw politics and football to be the same thing, that is according Simon Kuper, highlighting how football is merely a representation to one's country and society.

In Jonathan Wilson's book "Angels with Dirty Faces" he talks about Argentina's entire identity was defined by the national team as a country consisting mainly of immigrants. The national team was the only source of identity which included everyone in the country and differentiated them from the rest of the world.

Sports are the modern-day, civilized form of war. Instead of wearing around the fur of a lion, we just stitch stars on our shirts and number on the side to signify the times we won. Sadly, much like hunting a mammoth to feed a family of three, it is extremely difficult and rarely makes sense. The only thing to give it meaning is a false sense of satisfaction like a lion's head nailed to the wall.