World Cup 2022 LIVE: France set up dream final against Lionel Messi’s Argentina after overcoming Morocco

It is one of the regular moments of harsh reality that takes you out of the illusion that is this World Cup. As the taxi driver drops the group off, there is a sudden plea. It is not for a five-star rating.

“Can you give me a tip please?”, he asks. “I have no money to eat.”

The driver, of south Asian descent, sends almost everything he earns back to his family. This is supposed to be the long-awaited period when such workers can generate income due to the number of visitors to Qatar but here is another who is just starving.

Anyone who has been in Doha for the first week of this World Cup would have had many similar stories pass in front of their eyes. The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre said on Sunday that there had been six cases of migrant worker abuse reported in that time alone.

This is the side of the World Cup that Qatar would prefer you ignore, but that is unavoidable, given they are utterly essential to the running of this tournament.

Out of the many facts and figures circulated about Qatar’s problems, there is one realisation that should stand above everything. It is a disgrace that, in 2022, a country can host a World Cup where it has lured millions of people from the poorest countries on earth - often under false pretences - and then forced them into what many call “modern slavery”.

And yet this has just been accepted. The World Cup carries on, an end product of a structure that is at once Orwellian and Kafkaesque. A huge underclass of people work in an autocratic surveillance state, amid an interconnected network of issues that make it almost impossible to escape. “It’s all so embedded,” says Michael Page of Human Rights Watch.

Many will point to similar problems in the west but this isn’t the failure of a system. It is the system, global inequality taken to an extreme. “The bottom line is that these human rights abuses are not normal for a World Cup host,” says Minky Worden, also of Human Rights Watch.

Jack Charlton was not even the best footballer in his own family but he was a World Cup winner. Theo Hernandez might not be the best left-back in his family but he has scored in a World Cup semi-final. In the process, he may make his injured brother a double World Cup winner.

Certainly Didier Deschamps began the World Cup 2022 by preferring Lucas Hernandez, the more defensively-solid sibling and a stalwart of the 2018-winning side. He advances to a second successive final in part thanks to the second choice, who was swiftly promoted when his brother damaged a cruciate ligament in the opening minutes of the tournament. He saw off Morocco thanks to a man who started the World Cup on the bench and one who began the evening as a replacement: Theo was joined on the scoresheet by Randal Kolo Muani, who received a late call-up for the World Cup when Christopher Nkunku was ruled out.

They are far from the only examples of how France have turned adversity into an advantage. Theo Hernandez’s adventurous streak explains why he was the first opponent to score against Morocco this World Cup: why, when Kylian Mbappe’s shot was blocked, he was on hand in the six-yard box to hook in a shot.

Think of France in a World Cup semi-final and the image that may spring to mind dates back four decades. It is so vivid, so shocking, the assault by the West German goalkeeper Toni Schumacher on Patrick Battiston that it remains one of the most infamous moments in footballing history. At the time, it was not even deemed a foul. France, who played some beautiful football in 1982, went out on penalties, moral winners in a 3-3 draw but actual losers.

They have won four World Cup semi-finals since then, three involving Didier Deschamps, none with as many goals as they got in 1982, none as memorable, each with something of a recurring theme. France were not necessarily emphatic winners, but they were winners. Like Croatia in 1998, Portugal in 2006 and Belgium in 2018, Morocco could reflect on what might have been. Like Croatia 24 years ago, another country in their maiden semi-final on this stage, they are entitled to feel they were the better team.

It may not matter. Better to be serial winners than gallant losers. If Deschamps’ trophy collection is impressive enough, he also has a habit of steering sides through semi-finals, from the 2004 Champions League to the 2022 World Cup. Each is a means to an end. The sense is that his France do enough and no more, offering a kind of efficiency, even if they had to exert plenty of effort on an evening when Morocco tested their resolve and their legs alike.

Two hours before kick-off, fans milled up and down Lusail Boulevard in a hubbub of heart-pumping, stomach-gripping anticipation. It is a wide street full of palm trees and bright shops and generic restaurants, a themepark of a place, and this so-called ‘city of the future’ felt like a weird location for some football history. But here they waited, outside McDonald’s and Nando’s and Sainsbury’s, wondering what the night had in store.

This was where Argentina’s destiny would be decided; or rather Lionel Messi’s, for that was who they’d come to see. It was the only way to explain why, beyond Argentina’s core of travelling supporters, thousands of local fans were here wearing Argentina shirts and draped in Argentinian flags. Inside the giant illuminated stadium, a group of young Arabic men took their seats wearing traditional Keffiyeh headdress coloured in the famous blue and white stripes. Thousands of people had come not really to see a World Cup semi-final, nor even to see a football match, as such. They’d come to see a moment.

Messi has his own gravitational pull, one which extends from the streets of Rosario to the bland boulevards of Lusail and far beyond. At one minute to 10pm in Doha, a posse of local volunteers rolled up the giant centre-piece covering the middle portion of the pitch and lugged it up on to their shoulders. As they prepared to march away, suddenly their heads began to spin to the left, one after another like dominos. There was Messi, a few feet across the grass, walking to his mark for the start of the World Cup semi-final.

Fernando Santos has stepped down as Portugal coach following the team’s quarter-final exit at the Qatar World Cup.

Portugal were beaten by underdogs Morocco in the last eight to extend their wait for a first world title for at least another four years.

Santos took on the role of Portugal coach in 2014 and guided his nation to their first major trophy with a triumph at Euro 2016. Portugal were then title winners during the inaugural edition of the Nations League in 2019.

Santos, 68, made the bold call to drop captain Cristiano Ronaldo to the bench this month in Portugal’s last-16 win over Switzerland and subsequent loss to Morocco.

Against Switzerland, 37-year-old Ronaldo’s replacement Goncalo Ramos scored a hat-trick in a 6-1 rout. However, Ramos, 21, could not replicate that success against Morocco, nor could any Portuguese player find the net as they fell to a shock 1-0 loss.

Santos later said he did not regret the decision to bench Ronaldo in the defeat by Morocco, who went on to lose to defending champions France in the semi-finals.

“The Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) and Fernando Santos have agreed to end the highly successful journey that began in September 2014,” read an official statement from the FPF on Thursday (15 December).

“After one of the best performances ever by the National Team in the final stages of the World Championship, in Qatar, FPF and Fernando Santos understand that this is the right moment to start a new cycle.

“[...] The FPF Board will now begin the process of choosing the next national coach.”

Full story:

His final contribution brought the ultimate indignity. The byword for precision was smacked in the face by his own shot. Admittedly, it ricocheted back off Alexis Mac Allister and there was little Luka Modric could do about it. The winner of the Golden Ball in the last World Cup nevertheless ended up with the ball in his face in this.

And that, bar a third-place play-off, was Modric’s final involvement on this stage. His number went up seconds after; in effect, the white flag had been raised with it. When the captain came off, it was all over for Croatia. They were 3-0 down. He had wrested back control of one World Cup semi-final, his every pass asserting control with a trademark blend of elegance and intelligence, but that was four years ago against England. There was no repeat. Modric can feel timeless, but his time is up in World Cups.

They all knew it, the Argentina fans who joined in the ovation when Lovro Majer replaced him, his former Real Madrid teammate Angel Di Maria, who sought him out after the final whistle, the now retired Sergio Aguero who came to offer his condolences in the tunnel. Argentina had been graceless winners against the Netherlands in the quarter-final; when it came to Modric, however, they recognised greatness. Perhaps it was the parallel with Lionel Messi, with the other old-timer in his final World Cup; flip the result and others would have commiserated with him. One way or another, sadness was a certainty.

Paris Saint-Germain team-mates Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe will go head-to-head in Sunday’s World Cup final as Argentina take on reigning champions France.

Messi, at the age of 35, is looking to win his first World Cup at – in all probability – his last tournament while Mbappe, 12 years his junior, will join an elite group of players to have successfully defended the title should France repeat their feat of Russia 2018.

Messi and Mbappe jointly lead the race for the Golden Boot with five goals apiece.

Messi has failed to score in only one of his six starts, although three goals have come from the penalty spot. He has also produced three assists.

Mbappe has scored twice on two occasions and one of his two blank games was as a 63rd-minute substitute in the defeat to Tunisia.

Impenetrable for so long, Morocco were first forced into and then thrived as a more nuanced version of themselves before bowing out with pride at the hands of defending champions France.

Invigorated by Walid Regragui and embracing such a resolute style without the ball, their game plan was torn to pieces within five minutes of this absorbing World Cup 2022 semi-final.

Les Bleus ruthlessly applied a pin to what was a burgeoning atmosphere filled with whistles swirling around a hostile Al Bayt Stadium packed with Moroccan support.

The world champions happily teased the Atlas Lions, gently nudging what had been an defiant layer in front of Yassine Bounou’s goal. First through Ibrahima Konate, in for the ill Dayot Upamecano, and then Raphael Varane, who both observed and probed early on as Regragui’s men retreated into that familiar shell.

The moment it became obvious this would not be a regulation evening of association football came around 50 minutes before kick off. The stadium was barely 10 per cent full, the pitch deserted, and on jogged the French goalkeeping contingent to begin their warm-up. The reaction was deafening, a cacophony of whistles which rang out from the far end where a few thousand Moroccans had packed into the bottom tier. Then came the rest of the French players, and the whistles grew into a murderous screech. There was fury in the air, and things were about to get messy.

When they weren’t taunting the French they were drumming and singing and revelling in their first World Cup semi-final. Their chants were loud, constant and diverse, as translated at half-time by one fan with several Moroccan flags flapping around his body. “Always Morocco!” was a regular; “Boys, bring it home!” was an impassioned plea; and “Goal! Goal! Goal!” was their way of sucking the ball into the net when it came close. Later they embarked on a rousing Thunderclap and one woman pointed accusingly at people around her, demanding they stand and join in as if each and every ticket was a conscription to battle.

A night earlier Croatia had wilted under the weight of Argentina’s first goal, conceding a quick second and with it any foothold in the game. Morocco conceded much sooner here, but they did not fold. Their supporters were hushed for the briefest moment but by the time the ball was back on the centre spot they were chanting ferociously, an intoxicating swell of defiance, and if you’d not seen the goal you could have been convinced their team had scored it.