MOSCOW: France versus Croatia! Who would have ever thought it would all boil down to this?
Le Bleus may have found a place in a lot of people’s predicted finals but Croatia? Only the most optimistic of Croats would have put money on their team to still be in the running with just a game left.FIFA couldn’t have scripted a final woven together of such complex narrative threads even if they had tried.
There is the obvious David against Goliath storyline, perhaps the first World Cup final to have this big a gulf in footballing pedigree between the contestants in more than five decades.
On one hand, you have the 1998 champions and 2006 runners-up with one of the most stacked rosters in their own vaunted history. France have two of the most expensive players in the world in Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba. Another, Antoine Griezmann would have been added to that list, had he opted to leave his club Atletico Madrid.
The Croats are not lacking in big names. Luka Modric, who many consider the frontrunner for the Golden Ball, plays for Real Madrid. His midfield partner Ivan Rakitic plays for Barcelona. They have players from Juventus, Milan, Inter, Liverpool and Atletico Madrid.
But they are nowhere near the French when it comes to pedigree. This is just their fifth World Cup — pretty credible for a country which has only been in existence for 27 years.
They caused quite a flutter at their first outing in 1998, finishing third, but their record after that resembles your average Asian or African team. They finished 23rd in 2002, 22nd in 2006, failed to qualify in 2010 and 19th in 2014. This is only the second time that they have come out of the group.
Then there are the stories of the two managers. Didier Deschamps and Zlatko Dalic could not have taken more contrasting paths. Deschamps started his managerial career as a World Cup winner and was given the task of leading Monaco just months after he had retired as a player.
Indeed, when Dalic spoke of managers who were given jobs because of their names, it appeared to be a veiled dig at his opposing number. Yet for Deschamps, this is a tale of vindication. Even on the eve of a World Cup final, some reports described him as an ‘under-fire’ manager. Take that!
A different battle
Perhaps the reason Dalic has turned out to be such a perfect fit for this Croatia team is that they are fighting the same revolutionary fight — an insurrection against the established order.
He has always been an outsider, an average player who wasn’t handed anything on a platter when he took up a role behind the touchline. He spent the last 10 years in Asia — that graveyard of managerial careers where European managers usually go to retire. On Sunday, his mission is to show that he is as good as anyone with a more recognisable name and a more orthodox backstory.
Points to prove
There is Paul Pogba looking to show that he is so much more than just hairstyles, Antoine Griezmann hoping to make people forget that he had an average month by being at his magical best and Kylian Mbappe looking to cap off his breakout tournament by winning it.
There is Luka Modric, who is fresh off winning the Champions League, and there is his teammate Dejan Lovren who is fresh off losing that final — both facing arrests when they get back home on charges that a World Cup victory will likely make disappear.
There is Danijel Subasic, waiting for the game to peter out into another penalty shootout, for he has already won two of those. And there is Ivan Rakitic waiting to score a third winning penalty.
Then, there are 4.5 million Croatians, a people troubled by war, economic crises and political instability, who are waiting to find out what being on top of the world feels like. They already have an inkling.
“Croatians have put aside all their hardships, all their problems for one month to just be happy and joyous,” said Dalic on Saturday.
“This brings us strength and motivation.”
On Sunday, at the Luzhniki, all these stories will end at the same instant, in the same picture — that of a group of men holding aloft the World Cup as glory rains down on them in the form of golden confetti.