One of the greatest soccer players of all time capped his amazing career with a World Cup championship. Lionel Messi led Argentina to victory in an epic final match over France that will be talked about as long as people care about soccer.

You can follow the twists and turns of the match in this rundown from Fox Sports which includes video highlights that were shared by the network on Twitter.

Messi scored twice in the match, while French superstar Kylian Mbappé in France’s amazing comebacks. The match was a story of leads and comebacks. Argentina built a 2-0 lead by halftime, and had plenty of chances to extend the lead. But France stormed back led by Mbappé to send the match to overtime. His second goal was simply spectacular. Argentina took another lead, only to have Mbappé tie it again on a penalty kick in the 118th minute.

The match then went to penalty kicks, which always adds even more drama. It almost didn’t seem fair to have a match this good be decided in this way. Both Messi and Mbappé hit the opening penalty kicks for their respective sides, but then Emi Martinez made his first save in the penalty kick round, and then Gonzalo Montiel ultimately hit the winner for Argentina.

What a game!

Messi deserves this, and we have to consider that Mbappé is only 26. He’ll have more opportunities, but this one has to sting for him and for all of France.

Meanwhile, it’s party time in Argentina!!

Who said there’s no scoring in soccer?

Germany humiliated Argentina and loudmouth Maradona with a 4-0 thrashing that will be long-remembered in Argentina. There’s plenty of bad blood between the two sides, and Maradona was all to happy to shoot his mouth off in the days leading up to the match.

Germany is always respected as a legitimate contender, but this young side is playing much better than many experts predicted. They’re gelling as a team, and the goals have been text book displays of ball movement.

Argentina on the other hand has has a lethal attack but they were exposed on defense. Jeremy Shapp reported on the ESPN broadcast that the Germans were prepared to take advantage of the failure of Argentine attackers to get back quickly on defense.

The result was ugly for Argentina and beautiful for the Germans, who might be facing Spain in the semi-finals.Germ

It’s official. I don’t have to write an article about Tiger Woods. Oh wait, what have I done? My apologies Mr. Cabrera, now that Tiger’s back, it’s impossible to keep him out of a golf conversation.

But let’s not take away from Cabrera’s accomplishment, after all, he played better than Tiger and of course better than everyone else on the course. His green jacket is also an important first as posted on Golf.com:

Cabrera, who won the U.S. Open at Oakmont two years ago, finally earned a green jacket for Argentina.
…
“This is a great moment, the dream of any golfer to win the Masters,” Cabrera said through an interpreter during the green jacket ceremony. “I’m so emotional I can barely talk.”

Sweet. Awesome. I can really get behind a player like that, bringing home a major award, and being the first from his country to do so. But, I’m still reading all about how Tiger also played, and how Tiger also might have won.

Is it wrong that I’m so happy that Tiger didn’t win? When I was living in South Korea I heard that certain pop stars there had something called, “anti-fans.” These were people who were obsessed with certain celebrities just because they didn’t like them. I wonder if I’ve become something of an anti-fan for anybody at the top for too long. I admit to getting much more interested in tennis after Sampras started losing, and again after Federer lost the number one spot.

I suppose it’s only natural that we have a certain amount of enmity towards people dominating their respective fields. I think my particular problem though, is when a sport becomes more-or-less a one man show. It’s hard to care when there’s no competition in the competitions I’m watching. Growing up a Bulls fan was great until their final season with Jordan. It seemed they couldn’t lose, and they hardly ever did. I barely paid any attention at all.

But it’s not any athlete’s fault if they’re too good, if anything it should motivate others to work harder to improve themselves. Should we make Michael Phelps swim an extra lap just to make it more interesting? We can’t handi-cap people for being too good, but I wonder if we can’t focus on them slightly less than we do. Maybe the reason I’m tired of Tiger Woods is because I’m constantly hearing about him. How often was Michael Phelps shoved in front of me last summer?

There’s only so much anyone can take of the same thing. Perhaps we should focus more on what happened and what’s important, and less on the A-list also-rans. I can understand that it’s necessary to grab people’s attention, and using a big name to get that attention is an easy way to chalk up hits on a web page. But there’s got to be a better way. Of course, this article was supposed to be about Angel Cabrera wasn’t it? Not Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods. I’ll try harder (Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan) next time.