Phew! The 2022 World Cup is over, Lionel Messi has that elusive prize and Argentina have bragging rights over the soccer world for the next four years. So, it's time to re-rank.
Every FIFA representative near a microphone has been quick to call this one of the best World Cups ever, but in one way or another, most of them have been pretty good. While recency bias will almost certainly play a role here, let's go category-by-category and see how the last month shapes up with its historic peers.
Before we begin, we must address the obvious. The World Cup is where sports and politics overlap and intersect in the messiest ways. This tournament was awarded in the shadiest possible fashion, hundreds (at least) of migrant workers are believed to have died during its preparation, and Qatar leaned too far for comfort into "Respect our culture!" when its criminalization of being gay was raised and rainbows threatened to appear on shirts or armbands. This isn't a new thing for the World Cup: The tournaments in 1934 and 1938 were vehicles for Italy Prime Minister Benito Mussolini to promote fascism, while the 1978 edition in Argentina was held while the country was governed by a military junta.
Bill Connelly: When the primary storyline of the final pits Kylian Mbappe vs. Lionel Messi, both playing at or near the peak of their effectiveness, that's a pretty good start. And you certainly get some points for the number of incredible international talents almost certainly playing in their final World Cup -- Messi, Luka Modric, Cristiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, et cetera.
The competition is also noteworthy, however, for who it lacked: Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah and [pick your favorite player from the Italian team], plus injured stars like Karim Benzema, N'Golo Kante and Christopher Nkunku. There is always star power at the World Cup, but in the end I don't feel like this competition had any more than others even if the two biggest stars shined particularly bright.
James Tyler: I agree with you here. Also, this World Cup has been about the surprise packages (Morocco, Japan) as well as the more surprising names on various rosters. (Did anyone have Alexis Mac Allister as one of their players of the tournament? Me neither.) This has been a tournament where the collective has broadly outdone the individual talent, not to mention the drop in star power either through those injuries or through failure to qualify.
Oh, and some of the players to really impress aren't quite at that level, either, from Hakim Ziyech to Julian Alvarez (he'll be there someday, though) to Cody Gakpo. They might be on the billboard four years from now, but their performances in Qatar this winter certainly weren't the ones we were watching for pre-tournament.
BC: And honestly? That's the kind of tournament I tend to enjoy even more. I knew Messi was awesome, so nothing he could do here would have surprised me. Getting to know someone like Alvarez and getting a huge reminder of what Ziyech can do when he actually plays was delightful.
France sure could have used Benzema, Kante, Nkunku and Paul Pogba in the final, though, huh?
Goal quantity/excitement (1-5): 5
JT: I'll take this one first. The excitement has been there from start to finish, with a number of knockout round games going to the wire and several others showcasing the best that soccer has to offer -- that's right: all-gas, no-brakes attacking soccer and heroic, last-ditch defending. But at the same time, we did get more 0-0 games than the past World Cup and I think more than 2014 as well, while some of the games (any involving Croatia, Belgium) were simply lacking in quality and finishing.
The US huffed and puffed but failed to blow anyone's houses down, and if you take out some of the more lopsided results -- Portugal's 6-1 rout of the Swiss in the round of 16, England thundering Iran and Spain laying waste to Costa Rica -- it definitely lacked some of the pizzazz of tournaments past. I do think the midseason fit had an impact here, as players were a little tired at times and tactics were mercifully kept quite basic. Several games had the feel of something attritional rather than attractive.
BC: On the flip side, we got the most goals ever and a 3-3 final. Really, this was a "something for everyone" situation. The group stage gave us six 0-0s, nine 1-0s, three 3-2s, two 4-1s, a 3-3, a 4-2, a 6-2 and a 7-0. The knockout rounds gave us a shootout after 0-0 and two shootouts after 1-1 -- so, four total goals in 360 minutes, plus a 1-0 after 90 minutes as well -- along with two 3-0s, a 4-1, a 6-1 and a glorious final. In the end, I'd say the latter outweighs the former.
Upsets (1-5): 4
BC: Morocco beat Belgium, Spain and Portugal. Japan beat Germany and Spain. (In between, Costa Rica beat Japan.) Saudi Arabia nearly derailed Argentina's title bid before it even got started with a 2-1 win. Croatia beat Brazil, which was an upset even though it was also a defending finalist beating a 2018 quarterfinalist. South Korea advanced over Portugal and Uruguay. If we're including what amounted to dead rubbers, Cameroon beat Brazil and Tunisia beat France, which likely mattered quite a bit to Cameroon and Tunisia.
That's a lot. Upsets were this competition's calling card in the group stage.
JT: Even though we mostly got chalk in the knockout stages -- with the notable and joyous exception of Morocco -- the group stage had plenty of humble pie for overconfident superpowers.
BC: One more knockout upset, and it gets the full five points.
Location/Fans (1-5): 2
BC: When the host nation doesn't bring an enormous and vocal fan base to the table -- and a percentage of the fans it does bring are hired hands from elsewhere -- and its team quickly exits the tournament (Qatar lost its three group stage matches by a combined 7-1), and the location itself is pretty expensive and hard for millions of fans to reach, it's going to be difficult to give a score of more than 1.
