Still can’t get over the fact that Argentina surrendered two different 2-0 leads in the knockout rounds, and still managed to come back and win, and on penalties out of all possibilities. How much emotional resilience do you need to have to overcome such an adversity?
So to think about it, everything fell into place for Argentina and we all know that to win a World Cup, you need everything to go your way:
-Messi suddenly playing like it is he he is 22 again, at least in terms of his stats and effectiveness. Easily his best out of all the 5 WCs he played
-A smart coach who finally got the best out of Messi and Argentina
-a WC type of goalie that stops those critical shots - we all saw that one with a few mins to go in ET - and stopped enough shots in the penalties to make a difference.
-A team that was not only united and with a purpose, they were very strong emotional fortitude.
If you think about those 4 things above and compare to Brazil, the latter had nothing close to these. We had Neymar who got injured and despite coming back, was nowhere near Messi’s level. We had a mostly clueless coach. The goalie was good but could never stop a penalty shot. And of course won’t even go into team mental resilience.