VIVE LA FRANCE!
Kylian Mbappe, center, is mobbed by teammates after the 19-year-old star scored his second goal of the match to help France to a 4-3 victory that eliminated Lionel Messi and Argentina on Saturday during the World Cup round of 16.
Lionel Messi stared, hands on hips, pain etched across a face once boyish and filled with limitless joy, now obscured by a brown beard and hardened by expectations for his nation unmet.
Four hours later and 950 miles (1,530 kilometers) away, Cristiano Ronaldo’s eyes were wide in anger as he shouted in protest just ahead of the final whistle, once again arguing with a referee. The tirade got Ronaldo a second yellow card that would have suspended him for the next match. No worries, though, as Portugal’s World Cup ended with a loss.
Saturday will likely mark the end of an era for the World Cup, a decade in which much of the hype and pre-tournament talk has been about the best players in the world, the Spanish league rivals who have evenly split the last 10 FIFA Player of the Year Awards. Once again, both men have failed to replicate their club success for their countries.
Messi is a week past his 31st birthday and Ronaldo 33, former phenoms unlikely to reach Qatar 2022 or retain their exceptional skill if they manage to hang on. For both superstars, a World Cup title remained an unreachable star. On Saturday, they were both outshined by a pair of Paris Saint-Germain teammates, France’s Kylian Mbappe and Uruguay’s Edinson Cavani.
Younger legs have more speed and endurance. Most importantly, Cavani and Mbappe had more support and less pressure.
Messi hasn’t won a senior title with his nation, losing finals at the 2014 World Cup, and the 2007, `15 and `16 Copa Americas, the last when Messi failed on his penalty kick during a shootout. He faced massive criticism at home and retired from the national team only to be lured back for this World Cup cycle.
Ronaldo lost a World Cup semifinal in 2006 but never got past the second round again. He did help Portugal to its first European Championship in 2016.
If Argentina and Portugal won Saturday, the rivals would have matched up for a spot in the semifinals. Instead, they’ll race to the airport. Argentina lost to France 4-3 in Kazan and Portugal fell to Uruguay 2-1 at Sochi.
Brazil’s Pele and Argentina’s Diego Maradona became national treasures at home, celebrated for World Cup titles and global superstars. Fans who never saw them play for their clubs know of Pele and Maradona’s accomplishments every four years at the global tournament.
Messi and Ronaldo will be remembered for great club success, but not country triumph.
Barcelona signed the 13-year-old Messi to a contract scrawled on a napkin in 2000. He was 17 when he made his competitive firstteam debut. Titles accumulated at an unprecedented rate: four in the Champions League, nine in La Liga and six in the Copa del Rey.
Adulation at Camp Nou turned into worship; media called him “La Pugla (The Flea)” for his small frame and unparalleled acceleration, and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger equated Messi’s moves with a videogame creation, proclaiming he was “like a PlayStation.”
He scored at a rate once unfathomable: 383 goals in 418 league matches, 100 in 125 Champions League games and 552 in 637 firstteam appearances overall. He was a lifer for one of the most popular clubs in the world, a brand of his own, earning love in Spain but detachment from his countrymen in South America. Too often, his World Cup failures were compared to Maradona’s successes.
Ronaldo, too, debuted at 17, for Sporting Lisbon. His crossover dribble was already famous when Alex Ferguson snatched him for Manchester United ahead of the 2003-04 season and gave him the No. 7 of justdeparted David Beckham.
After six seasons that included three Premier League titles, one Champions League and one FA Cup, he moved to Real Madrid and scored 450 goals in 438 matches, winning four Champions League titles, and the league and cup twice each. He’s set a Champions League record with 120 goals, leaving Messi a distant second. FRANCE 4, ARGENTINA 3 >> Quick-footed French teenager Kylian Mbappe scored two goals in a five-minute span of the second half in Moscow to help his team rally to win and earn a spot in the World Cup quarterfinals.
Mbappe, 19, was a constant threat to Argentina’s creaking defense with his speed and skill and was at the heart of France’s oftenbreathtaking display, particularly in the middle of the second half.
He became the second teenager to score multiple goals in a knockout match at the World Cup. Pele was the other, doing it twice at 17 at the 1958 tournament in Sweden.
URUGUAY 2, PORTUGAL 1 >> Edinson Cavani scored twice to give Uruguay a win and send it to the World Cup quarterfinals.
Cavani took the spotlight from Ronaldo , combining with Luis Suarez to compete a series of precision passes to give Uruguay the early advantage with a header in the seventh minute. And after Portugal equalized on Pepe’s header in the 55th minute, it was Cavani again finishing a perfect Uruguay counter in the 62nd with a shot from just inside the penalty area that caught Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio slightly out of position and curled inside the far post.
Cavani now has three goals at the World Cup, but limped off in the 70th minute with an apparent injury and had to be replaced. RUSSIA-SPAIN TODAY >> With Russia expected to defend in numbers, Spain’s speed and attack will be crucial in their last-16 match at the World Cup. One of the players the 2010 champions will be relying on to cut through the host’s back line is David Silva.
He scored for Spain in its 3-0 win over Russia in the semifinals of the European Championship in 2008, the last time the two teams played in a competitive fixture.
After tough matches in a group also containing Portugal, Iran and Morocco, Silva and coach Fernando Hierro both called on Spain to be more meticulous and cut down on errors.
“It was a very tough group and we need to minimize our mistakes. That’s the key,” Silva said. “If in difficult matches we start handing out goals to the opposition, things are going to be difficult for us, so we need to tighten up our defending.”
The winner of the match goes on to face today’s Croatia-Denmark winner in the quarterfinals.
Hierro never expected to be leading Spain into the knockout stages of this World Cup at least not until his predecessor Julen Lopetegui was fired as coach two days before the tournament began.
Despite that disruption, Hierro said Spain has been able to do detailed research on its opponents, and Russia is no different.