Messi and Yamal Collide in World Cup Final After Finalissima Showdown Was Called Off in Qatar

Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal were supposed to share a pitch four months ago. A security crisis in the Middle East put a stop to that plan. Now the pair will finally meet with a World Cup on the line, Argentina against Spain, on Sunday at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford.

It is the collision FIFA circled long before this tournament kicked off: the reigning champions against a side unbeaten in 37 matches across all competitions. Messi has scored more World Cup goals than any player in the competition’s history. Yamal, 19, represents the version of Spain built to end his era at the top of the sport. Neither camp admitted any fear of the other all summer, and Sunday will settle who was right. One team has the best attack left in the tournament. The other has the best defence. Only one trophy is on the table.

A Final Five Months Late

Argentina and Spain were meant to meet long before this tournament reached its final weekend. South American champion Argentina and European champion Spain had been drawn against each other for Finalissima, an exhibition between continental winners scheduled for Doha, Qatar in late March.

That game never happened. Security concerns tied to unrest in the Middle East forced its cancellation, with Iran intensifying attacks on neighbouring countries at the time in retaliation for aerial strikes carried out by the United States and Israel, a conflict that has continued. Lusail Stadium, the venue for that exhibition and the site of Argentina’s penalty shootout win over France at the 2022 World Cup final, sat empty instead.

Finalissima has produced one previous meeting between continental champions in this cycle. Argentina beat Italy 3-0 at Wembley in June 2022, with Lautaro Martinez, Angel Di Maria and Paulo Dybala scoring and Messi named Player of the Match. A repeat fixture against Spain was meant to follow the same format: a one-off exhibition, low stakes, an evening for goals and not much else. Instead, Messi and Yamal will meet with a trophy between them.

Four months on, the pair get their meeting anyway, just outside New York rather than in Qatar, and with a far bigger prize attached than a mid-season exhibition would have carried.

How the Semifinals Unfolded

Spain’s route to the final was settled first. Mikel Oyarzabal converted a penalty to open the scoring against France at Dallas Stadium in Arlington, Texas on 14 July, and Spain closed out a 2-0 win to reach a first World Cup final in 16 years, having last played for the trophy in 2010.

Argentina’s route was far less comfortable. Anthony Gordon put England ahead in the second half in Atlanta a day later, and the lead held deep into stoppage time before Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez scored twice in the space of a few minutes, the winner arriving after nine additional minutes had already been signalled. It was the second time in three World Cups that England had taken a semi-final lead and gone on to lose it, a distinction no other nation shares.

England and France now meet in Miami on 18 July for third place, a day before the final, closing out the bracket for every team that started the tournament in June.

Spain’s manager Luis de la Fuente has now beaten England in back-to-back finals across two different tournaments. He took over the Spain job in December 2022 and won Euro 2024 in Berlin by beating England 2-1 in that final, going through the whole tournament unbeaten. Argentina were the side to get past England this time, in the World Cup semi-final rather than a final, but the pattern of Spain’s manager finishing above England at major tournaments now stretches back two summers.

Two Contrasting Routes to New Jersey

Spain arrived unbeaten across seven matches: six wins and a draw, 13 goals scored and only one conceded. La Roja opened with a scoreless draw against Cape Verde, thrashed Saudi Arabia 4-0, then beat Uruguay 1-0 to close the group phase. The knockout rounds brought wins over Austria (3-0), Portugal (1-0), Belgium (2-1) and, in the semi-final, France (2-0).

Argentina won every match it played, seven from seven. Lionel Scaloni’s side scored 19 goals and conceded seven, a far more open route to the final than Spain’s. Group wins over Algeria (3-0), Austria (2-0) and Jordan (3-1) gave way to knockout victories against Cape Verde (3-2), Egypt (3-2), Switzerland (3-1) and England (2-1), the last of those completed with a stoppage-time turnaround in Atlanta.

Both nations arrived at the tournament sitting at the top of the FIFA world rankings, Argentina first and Spain second. No side left in the competition conceded fewer than Spain’s one goal, and no side left scored more than Argentina’s 19. One team has spent seven matches closing games out from the front. The other has spent seven matches finding a way back into them.

A Photograph From Camp Nou

The two biggest names in Sunday’s final share a history that predates either of their careers. In 2007, Messi took part in a charity photoshoot at Camp Nou and was pictured holding a baby sitting in a plastic tub. That baby was Yamal.

Yamal went on to become, like Messi before him, a left-footed academy product of Barcelona who broke into the senior Spain team as a teenager. He was 16 when he scored the goal at Euro 2024 that made him the youngest player to find the net at a European Championship. Two years on, he is 19 and starting a World Cup final. Almost two decades after that photograph was taken, the pair will stand on opposite sides in the biggest match either has played.

Streaks, History and the Odds

Spain brought a 37-match unbeaten run into the final across all competitions and friendlies, 28 wins and nine draws, with the team’s last defeat a 1-0 loss to Colombia in March 2024. Argentina had not lost a World Cup match in 13 outings, 11 wins and two draws, a run stretching back to the match after a shock opening-game defeat to Saudi Arabia at the 2022 tournament.

Argentina is chasing a fourth World Cup title and a place in history as the first side to retain the trophy since Brazil in 1958 and 1962, a feat before that managed only by Italy in 1934 and 1938. Spain wants a second title to go with the one won in 2010, the tournament that made tiki-taka the sport’s dominant idea for the best part of a decade.

Bookmakers made Spain the early favourite at +120, with Argentina priced at +275 and a draw at +200. Those numbers were likely to move again before kickoff, with more money still to land on the fixture in the final days.

Two Ages, One Trophy

Messi turned 39 in June and now plays his club football at Inter Miami, a long way removed from the Camp Nou dressing room where he once posed with a baby he had never met. He is already the outright leading scorer in World Cup history, a record that will stand no matter what happens on Sunday.

Yamal is at the opposite end of that timeline. He arrived at his first World Cup as one of the sport’s most watched teenagers, two years removed from the Euro 2024 run that made his name known outside Spain. Sunday is the first time either man has faced the other with a World Cup, rather than a friendly or an exhibition, at stake. Every previous meeting between them has been a preview. This one decides something.

The Biggest World Cup Ends Sunday

Sunday brings the curtain down on a 48-team, 104-match tournament spread across the United States, Canada and Mexico, the largest World Cup ever staged. It has been built all summer around a clash of styles: Argentina’s attack, the most productive left in the competition, against Spain’s defence, breached only once in seven matches.

FIFA has planned a closing ceremony at New York New Jersey Stadium starting at 1:30pm local time on 19 July, ahead of kickoff, with Post Malone headlining alongside Laura Pausini, Nicole Scherzinger, Robbie Williams, IShowSpeed and a special appearance from Tom Cruise. Justin Bieber will co-headline the half-time show with Madonna, Shakira and BTS, and Jennifer Hudson will sing the United States national anthem before the game.

Whichever team lifts the trophy, the final closes out a tournament that will be remembered for its scale as much as its football. Three host countries, six weeks of matches and a bracket that eliminated 45 other teams all come down to one kickoff at New York New Jersey Stadium.

Messi arrived hoping to close his international career with back-to-back titles. Yamal arrived hoping to open his with one. Only one of them leaves New Jersey with the answer he wanted, two decades after they first met in a locker room at Camp Nou, when neither had any idea what the other would go on to become.