LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) \u2014 Lionel Messi finally won the biggest prize in soccer. Argentina beat France 4-2 in a penalty shootout to claim a third World Cup title despite Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 scoring the first hat trick in a final in 56 years. Gonzalo Montiel scored the clinching penalty as Argentina won after a 3-3 draw. Messi\u2019s once-in-a-generation career is complete now that he is finally a World Cup champion. Messi is definitively in the pantheon of soccer\u2019s greatest ever players alongside Pel\u00e9 and Diego Maradona. Europe\u2019s run of four straight World Cup winners dating to 2006 came to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) \u2014 Lionel Messi made his strongest case yet to be considered soccer\u2019s greatest player of all time after finally winning the World Cup. It will never be possible to say definitively even after Argentina\u2019s 4-2 penalty shootout victory over France in the final at Lusail Stadium. No one will ever surpass Pele for some. The Brazil great won the World Cup three times. Even in Messi\u2019s homeland there is Diego Maradona. He remains for many the country’s ultimate soccer icon after captaining his national team to the 1986 World Cup title. And Messi has even had a personal rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo for the past 15 years or so. He also now has a World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) \u2014 Lionel Messi finally won the biggest prize in soccer. Argentina beat France 4-2 in a penalty shootout to claim a third World Cup title despite Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 scoring the first hat trick in a final in 56 years. Gonzalo Montiel scored the clinching penalty as Argentina […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265780,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265778\/revisions\/265780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}