How Argentina Defeated France to Win Their First World Cup in 36 Years

It was the final we were expecting with a lot of oohs, aahs and non-stop drama. France resurrected themselves from the dead to drag themselves into the game only to be undone by the lottery of the penalty shoot-out. One of the tactical cards that Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni played was starting attacks on the right and switching it to the left where Angel Di Maria was stationed.

It is a well-known fact that Kylian Mbappe tends to leave a host of space in his wake due to his little contribution to defensive work when France does not have the ball. Hence, Lionel Messi, Rodrigo De Paul and Nahuel Molina created overloads on the left which generated a couple of problems for France. Argentina’s overload attracted Aurelien Tchouameni, Adrien Rabiot and Theo Hernandez over, and to make matters worse, Antoine Griezmann was drawn to Enzo Fernandez to stop him from progressing the ball when he received passes from the Argentine centre-backs.

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This allowed Alexis Mac Allister to move into space vacated by Griezmann so that Argentina could switch the play from the left to Di Maria on the right via Mac Allister. Once Di Maria got the ball, the onslaught on France could begin -- the Juve winger had Jules Kounde for toast for the entirety of his 64-minute appearance, and as such, Ousmane Dembele was dropping to support Kounde in dealing with him, but this plan didn’t work because Nicolas Tagliafico and Mac Allister moved in such a way that  two scenarios were constantly created: