Starring Argentine veteran Lionel Messi, 35, and young Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, 23, the 2022 World Cup final was worthy of its stars and will certainly be remembered as one of the most disputed in history.
The 2-2 draw in normal time and the final score of 3-3 in overtime, however, do not faithfully reflect how the match went.
Messi and company dominated the shares, reinforces the analysis of Sheet based on the statistic known as xT, an abbreviation for the English expression “expected threat”.
Argentina already had two goals ahead in the 35th minute of the first half, after a penalty converted by Messi and a manual counterattack finished by Di María. In addition, he managed to kick on four other occasions in the initial stage. France, on the other hand, failed to enter the area or scare goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez once.
According to the metric that indicates the degree of threat of the moves, the new world champions were more dangerous during 39 minutes, against 14 of the European team, before the first break.
In the second half, there was balance. Each team was more threatening for 27 minutes. The Europeans’ first finalization in the whole match happened only at 22 of the second half, in a header without any danger from Kolo Muani.
Mbappé needed less than two minutes to show why he is already considered a World Cup phenomenon. First, the French shirt number 10 converted a penalty conceded by Muani, at 35 minutes. In the next move, he received a beautiful pass from Thuram for elevation and hit it first to tie the duel with a great goal.
Even showing fatigue and with confidence shaken by the draw suffered, Argentina had 12 minutes of more dangerous actions, against 4 of France, in the first part of extra time. And the scenario was repeated in the last half, with 15 and 4 minutes, respectively, including extra time.
Messi did his part to confirm Argentina’s best performance in extra time, but Mbappé once again postponed his rival’s party.
The overall balance of the duel was 93 minutes of Argentine superiority, while the other 49 were more dangerous for the French.
Overall, Argentina finished twice as many times as France. There were 20 moves completed by the champions, against 10 by the runners up.
Not counting the missed shots, there were 10 shots on target by the South Americans (3 goals and 7 saves), compared to 5 by the Europeans (3 and 2, respectively).
According to data from the specialized company Opta, possession of the ball was with Argentina for 54% of the time, and with France for the other 46%.
According to FIFA, which also considers moments without a clear dominance, it was 46% for the South Americans and 40% for the runners-up, in addition to 14% in dispute.
Basically, xT assigns a relative hazard to each place on the field. The calculation takes into account a database with thousands of previous submissions and their respective known outcomes.
The metric calculated by Sheet considers the probability that, given an action in a given sector of the field, the team manages to reach the goal in the next five plays.
The account is based on Opta data. To illustrate the moments of the match, the moving average of the accumulated xT of each team is observed in five-minute windows, with a greater weight for the most recent one, and so on, until the first minute of the break.
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