The 2022 World Cup is down to its final four, and if you’ve been following our prognostications (and even our follow-up attempts), it’s hardly the final four you expected.
Argentina and France? Sure. Makes sense. Then it gets a little off the beaten path. Croatia’s return to the semifinals (despite the fact that it still hasn’t won a knockout match in regular time since 1998) after a surprise run to the final in 2018 and a significant player overhaul certainly wasn’t expected. A semifinalist coming out of Africa wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility—before Sadio Mané got hurt, reigning Cup of Nations champion Senegal was a popular pick—but few outside Marrakesh saw Morocco’s ascent coming. The Atlas Lions hired manager Walid Regragui at the end of August and were in a difficult group with Croatia and Belgium. They had two World Cup wins in their history and had never made as much as a quarterfinal, despite being a hard out for Portugal and Spain four years ago.
Nevertheless, those are the four we’re left with, with Argentina and Croatia playing Tuesday and France and Morocco squaring off Wednesday to determine Saturday’s third-place and Sunday’s final matchups.
So how do the potential finals stack up? At risk of being grossly wrong again, we’re here to rank the four possibilities for the neutral viewer:
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1. Argentina vs. France
The only potential matchup featuring two past winners was a round-of-16 meeting four years ago, and it produced one of the most entertaining spectacles in Russia. Now, it would be a legacy showdown. For Argentina, it’s all about Messi and the last piece of the puzzle on his résumé, with Maradona’s spirit coloring the background. Messi has had a fantastic World Cup and is firmly in the golden ball conversation. That assist against the Netherlands was one of the jaw-dropping moments of the competition. His PSG teammate, Kylian Mbappé, is also in that conversation. He may have been relatively quiet against England in the quarterfinals, but his five goals lead all scorers in Qatar, and he’s been about as good as could have been expected considering the standard he set in his maiden World Cup in Russia. He’s backed up his talk about his plans for an encore.
Speaking of Qatar, this has to be its dream final: Two of its PSG’s superstars on display, one guaranteed to lift the trophy and become the face of its own competition.
2. Croatia vs. France
Only once before has there been a rematch in consecutive World Cup finals, when Argentina and West Germany met in 1986 and ’90. This would be considerably more surprising given Croatia’s general stature as a “second-tier” competitor—a label that may be in need of an update. Nevertheless, for a nation of fewer than four million people (just over the population of Connecticut, which, given the state’s comparison to the size of Qatar in so many stories written about this World Cup, that is perhaps fitting), reaching two straight finals would be one impressive accomplishment. Doing it by eliminating Brazil and Argentina in a row would be even more of an achievement.
They’ve met four times since France’s 4–2 win in the 2018 final thanks to the UEFA Nations League, with France holding a 2-1-1 edge in those meetings. Croatia won the most recent one, a 1–0 result powered by a Luka Modrić penalty kick in June, although the personnel in that match was markedly different to what would be on the field in this one.
3. Argentina vs. Morocco
Messi’s quest to win the World Cup is ultimately going to be the tiebreaker for the two Morocco possibilities, although any of his haters would certainly claim some sort of asterisk due to the perceived degree of difficulty of the final opponent (which, by the way, would be just complete and utter disrespect for what Morocco has deservedly accomplished).
But then again, consider this from the Morocco perspective should the Atlas Lions go on to win: They would go down as the ultimate GOAT tamers. Cristiano Ronaldo may have played a small part in the quarterfinals, but Morocco all but ended his World Cup career. To get to the final, it’d have to go through France and Mbappé, a GOAT in waiting. And then there’s Messi, the GOATest of them all, on the final stage. That’s as compelling as anything.
4. Croatia vs. Morocco
This is the only potential matchup that would guarantee an addition to the pantheon of World Cup winners. Only eight nations have won the World Cup on the men’s side, and the last time there was a newcomer came when Spain won it in 2010 (before that, it was France, when it became the seventh nation to win it in 1998). World Cups are really hard to win. There’s a reason so few have managed to do it. If either of these upstarts were to get beyond the velvet rope to join the blue blood VIPs, it would mark one of the most incredible achievements of all time. That should be enough to draw the neutral viewer, even if neither fancies itself as a particularly aggressive attacking side.
It would also mark a rematch from the group stage. The teams played to a 0–0 draw to open Group F action on Nov. 23.
