After 63 minutes of the World Cup final, or about 10 minutes Before the Chaos Era (BCE), No 11 lit up the fourth official’s board and almost every corner of the stadium stood in reverence. They had come to see Lionel Messi’s coronation as one of football’s three kings, but first they had been treated to a gift from a wise man. Angel Di Maria was tiring now, but his first-half brilliance was why Argentina were surely about to win the World Cup.
It was not as if France hadn’t been warned. For 20 minutes it was hard to know whether you were watching a World Cup final or the public roasting of Jules Kounde. Di Maria crept up and down the touchline over Kounde’s shoulder, lurking in the shadows as Argentina peppered cross-field balls over the head of the French right back, who wore the look of a man staring into a thousand suns. Once Kounde scuttled out to meet him, Di Maria offered up his array of old tricks: a drop of the shoulder, a stop-and-go, an injection of pace from those 34-year-old legs.
