Before Messi and Ronaldo, there were arguments over Pelé and Maradona. I couldn’t say much about the eventually friendly rivalry, because by the time I was even remotely knowledgeable about professional soccer, Pelé had been retired for ages and Maradona had descended into drug-addled villainy (in other words, it was 1990). Weird start to a quick eulogy, I know, but my argument for Pelé was, and remains, simple.

At 17, Pelé scored five goals in the two biggest games you could play in: the World Cup semifinal and final.

At 20, his government literally declared him a national treasure so that he’d never play club ball outside Brazil.

At 27, the Nigerian Civil War was paused so the combatants could watch him play.

At 34, a few years after retirement, he joined the New York Cosmos and, for a fleeting moment in the Age of Disco and Stagflation, made soccer the biggest ticket in the US.

And then, of course, there’s the bazillion goals he scored.

There’s a lot to be said for other players in terms of skill and achievement, and if I were objective enough I might name a few guys who technically were better players. But none were greater.

Look back at that list– forget the bazillion goals, because I’m sure a few hundred of them are in dispute here and there– look back at that crazy list, and tell me who matches that.

Nobody. The man stands alone.

Merry Christmas! Here’s to peace, grace, and growth for all.

We’re having a colder-than-usual Christmas in Jacksonville– and I suppose elsewhere, since these cold snaps tend not to be localized to a single area code.

Alas, it’ll only last a few snowless days, but it’s still nice to have the opportunity to bundle up, buy cocoa packets in bulk, throw a log in the fireplace, and pretend we actually have seasons down here.

While watching the final yesterday, I tried to liken it to other famous matches, because enjoying things for what they are isn’t my thing.

First to mind was the France-Brazil final in 1998. If memory serves, Brazil was a slight favorite heading into that game, and then word got out that Ronaldo– now with appellation “Nazario,” which presumably means “has won a World Cup”– was ill and might miss the game. He played anyways, but Brazil looked off. France was up 2-0 at the half, and went on to win 3-0.

That seemed to fit. France had been dealing with more injuries and illnesses than most had, including a virus going through camp in the days leading up to the semifinal and the final. Argentina was, at least in my mind, an underdog. Argentina got up early on a Messi PK, France had to throw more guys forward, and Argentina went up 2-0.

But instead of getting put away for good, France came back. Mbappé proved his mettle.

So then I was reminded of the ’05 Champions League final, when Milan went up 3-0 early, and Liverpool roared back in the second half to tie it just an hour in. Then the game slowed down significantly for the last 30 plus overtime and, unfortunately, Liverpool won on PKs. That seemed like a good analogue. Argentina’s lead wasn’t as big as Milan’s, but they held it a lot later than Milan did, so France’s later comeback was at least as impressive as Liverpool’s bigger comeback. And so I thought the game would slow down for the last ten minutes plus stoppage, and then slink into overtime and maybe PKs.

But France kept throwing everything at Argentina for the last few minutes and stoppage time, going for the greatest comeback ever. The game didn’t slink into overtime. It escalated. Argentina got their second wind and threw everything back.

And then Messi scored that third goal, and it looked like 1986, when Maradona and company fought off a West German comeback from 2-0 down, and Maradona got the winning assist late. A fitting parallel, except that Messi would score the winner himself this time, not dish it, and raise the Cup– and he hadn’t used the “hand of God” to do so. This was better than ’86.

Except that Mbappé scored one more time, and all comparisons ran out. I didn’t care who won the shootout– either way would be a great story.

I once wrote that the ’06 final was great for having everything bad about soccer– “dives, bad calls, make-up calls, taunting, head-butting, exhaustion, and a dreaded penalty shootout.” This one was great for having everything good about soccer. Great offense, both teams trying to win instead of parking the bus and playing for counters (or worse, grinding it out for a shootout), no egregious calls, good calls on all three PKs, no inexplicable violence from either captain, both teams being thrown back on their heels and then roaring back… and a dreaded penalty shootout.

Yet this one wasn’t actually dreaded. Oftentimes shootouts serve to grudgingly pick between two awful performances, or to see whether the parked-bus can finally sneak past the overwhelming offense. Those shootouts are dreaded. This shootout pitted actual gunslingers against each other. Two winners were actively trying to win, and we needed to choose a champion.

Congratulations to Argentina and especially, of course, to Messi.

I hope he enjoys his well-earned retirement with Inter Miami.

We come to the end of the Greatest Month in Sports, though its greatness has been tempered by being jammed in the middle of so many club seasons and my school days. Hopefully FIFA won’t get bribed into that ever again.

My picks have been middling, due lately and mainly to Morocco’s impressive run. It is true that they parked the bus even before any passengers got off (or on? Now that I think of it I’m not sure how the metaphor works), but they also attacked teams. A lot. At least as much as anyone else attacked them. For instance, in the quarters, Portugal attacked Morocco more than Spain did in the R16, but Morocco attacked back every bit as much. It was the same against France in the semis, and against Croatia in the consolation: less possession, but nearly equal number of shots on and off goal. They didn’t just sit back; they remembered to counter. They just ran into a French buzzsaw, that’s all.

The final matchup half-vindicates me. Before the tournament I kept seeing nobody pick France to repeat, but I couldn’t see why not aside from the rarity of repeats. Well, teams usually fail to repeat as World Cup champs because they get older, or injured, or the run of good luck they needed to avoid pitfalls runs out. But France? They lose one star to age or injury, they just grab another one off the bench. Q: Benzema? A: Giroud. Q: Pogba? A: So what? We’ll even shrink our midfield. They break down in defense and give up a goal? They just go score more. They’ve given up a lot of goals on their way to the final, but they’ve had more than enough firepower to overcome that. I picked against them over and over again last time around until the final and they kept proving me wrong.

My initial thoughts on Argentina were wrong (they were “going to disappoint despite the hype”). A kid asked why I was dismissive of their chances. I asked, “Do you know Messi?” Kid said yes. I asked, “Do you know anyone else who plays for Argentina?” Kid said no. Now, that doesn’t settle it, because you can succeed without big names in this sport. Name anyone who plays for Morocco. Seriously, even now, after that run– name anyone who plays for Morocco. While you’re at it, name anyone who plays for Croatia aside from Croatian Pirlo.

Argentina of course has other big names, but a good rule of thumb is that the teams with more players that casual or even non-fans have heard of will perform better, so I thought it was no big deal to predict an exit in the early knockout rounds. Whoops. The newest big name has been Álvarez, who’d have an insane plus-minus if they tracked it in soccer. He’s been on the field for almost all of Argentina’s goals, scoring four of his own, and was not on the field for any goal they’ve given up.

At one point I thought FIFA was trying to set up Argentina-Portugal, for obvious reasons. Alas, they can rig the bidding process, but not every single actual match.

Anyhow, my pick: I’d love to see Messi win the Cup– I think he’s the greatest player post-Maradona– but France has too many weapons. France will win, with Giroud capping an especially good year between winning the Scudetto and the Jules Rimet. Sadly, said victory will be followed by overwrought hue and cry over Messi’s failure to win it all.

I’m getting worse at this. I got five picks right out of eight picks, and even a few of the ones I got right were somehow wrong.

I had Spain as a lock, and they lost in PKs. Senegal got blown out instead of upsetting England. And the US got knocked out by the Netherlands in embarrassing fashion.

This was a weird Cup for watching the US. Normally we get assigned to a group and I think, “With a little luck and catching the other teams on bad days, we can advance.” Not this time. This time we were legitimately the second-best team in the group going in. We clearly should have beaten Wales instead of tying, which nearly came back to haunt us since we needed that final win against Iran. We could have beaten England, and a tie was a just result, if such a thing exists in sport. In years past, I would’ve thought we’d be lucky to escape with just a one-goal loss, but our guys went toe-to-toe with them and could have won. So we advanced and took on the Netherlands, and…

I honestly thought that was a winnable game. There was some offense, though Pulisic’s miss will haunt him for the rest of his life. Haunting us was the lack of real strikers. It was obvious there was no target player at all, no dedicated finisher, nobody who struck fear (or even mild discomfort) in the hearts of our opponents. They seemed locked in on Pulisic, because he was clearly our go-to on offense, but he’s just not as finishy as Donovan or Dempsey were, and he’s not a big ball-winner in the box like McBride or Altidore were. I’m not saying any of those were superstars, but they were clearly the best we had at those vitally important scoring or assisting roles back in the days, and that just seemed to be missing. This team had a bunch of hybrids between forwards and attacking mids, and couldn’t seem to settle on who should be up top running at defenders, or winning headers in the box, or… anything.

And on the defensive end, you had the defensive mids losing track of the Dutch scorers. If you go back and watch the first two Dutch goals, you’ll notce American defensive mids jogging a few yards behind the scorer instead of being goalside, or even shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Amateur mistake. Grade school mistake. Old man in a beer league mistake. Disgusting.

A new metric occurred to me, while watching USA-England, to gauge the difference between two teams. When the back four are passing the ball around, preparing an attack, notice how far back they play. The more skill they have and the better organized they are, the further downfield they can set up. The less skill, the less organized, the deeper in their own end they have to set up because they need the extra time and space to keep the ball away from the opponents. Against England, our back four was often lined up level with the bottom of the center circle on our side of the field. England’s back four lined up in our half. That’s a 10- to 15-yard difference in skill and organization.

Anyhow, I’ll ramble more about the USMNT some other time. Back to my horrible picks. I didn’t expect Croatia to need PKs to beat Japan, and I didn’t have Portugal blowing out Switzerland. I even had Portugal-Switzerland as the most likely to go to PKs. Not even close. The Swiss should be banned from the next three World Cups; that performance was atrocious. Their slot really should have gone to someone else this year; maybe the second-place finisher in their qualifying group.

Brazil and France looked great. I expect to see them in the final. Spain was atrocious. It’s like they don’t understand the point of the game, which is to score goals. Possession is great; possession is necessary; but you have to remember to shoot. Spain didn’t. They had over 90% accuracy on over 1000 passes against Morocco… and one less shot on target. Riciulous.

Anyhow, let me do a bracket for the rest of the way, which will undoubtedly jinx certain teams.

Argentina over the Netherlands and Brazil over Croatia in two close games. An upset in either wouldn’t be too shocking.

538 has England as a slight favorite over France. I think that’s garbage. France has looked great so far. France over England. Portugal remembers to actually attack Morocco, and will win.

Brazil over Argentina in one semifinal. Brazil has too much talent that has learned to play well enough without starters, unlike the 2014 team. France over Portugal in the highest-scoring game of the tournament, I hope.

France over Brazil in the final. I like the Brazilian team, but nobody’s repeated in 60 years so I’d like to see that bit of history. Then again, maybe I’m compensating for picking against France over and over again in 2018. We’ll see.