Argentina's victory means that all six grand football nations of this world have won the title this century and it took only the minimum of six tournaments to achieve it. And yes, I am not counting England because they are only a grand football nation in their own imagination; in their history they've reached only one WC final (won in 1966) and only one Euro final (lost in 2021). That's far too little in 90+ years of WCs and 60 years of Euro tournaments and therefore they belong into the second tier with nations like Portugal, Netherlands and Uruguay. Maybe a bit unfair to Uruguay, but the small nation's most successful period dates way too far back into the past to count them on the same level as the big six.

As an Englishman I have to concede you are right about that. See my rant in my prior post to see my feeling on it.

I’d like to believe we can be up there but until the team gets there on a regular basis we’re just pretenders with the fans collectively suffering delusions of grandeur. You can see this in how fan regard Southgate; many talk about him as though he’s our worst ever manager and you’d think he was the only one to not win a tournament with England when he’s actually the second most successful behind Alf Ramsay (1966 coach).

Still, I hope and dream for the next tournament, as I always do.

Just as happy for Ángel Di María, what a perfomance that was.

Taking him off was the stupidest decision, Argentina and Messi were just not nearly as dangerous without him. 

Argentina's victory means that all six grand football nations of this world have won the title this century and it took only the minimum of six tournaments to achieve it.

I am glad that Argentina won in the end, because France was a no-show for the first 70 minutes and getting into overtime was already way more than they deserved. Argentina got better from game to game in this tournament while France descended on the final stretch; their game against Morocco was already bad, but against Argentina they were so harmless that one had to wonder how they even survived the group phase, if that's their level of play.

Still, the first penalty kick of the game was a situation where I couldn't see a foul even after seeing it ten times. Even more puzzling was that there wasn't even a VAR check that urged the referee on the field to watch the scene again on the monitor.

Argentina's victory means that all six grand football nations of this world have won the title this century and it took only the minimum of six tournaments to achieve it. And yes, I am not counting England because they are only a grand football nation in their own imagination; in their history they've reached only one WC final (won in 1966) and only one Euro final (lost in 2021). That's far too little in 90+ years of WCs and 60 years of Euro tournaments and therefore they belong into the second tier with nations like Portugal, Netherlands and Uruguay. Maybe a bit unfair to Uruguay, but the small nation's most successful period dates way too far back into the past to count them on the same level as the big six.