World Cup Predictions: Lawro's 18/1 Argentina v France play

World Cup Final Prediction

Argentina 1-0 France
Lionel Messi to Score First

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Sunday 3pm, 2022 World Cup Final: Argentina v France
TV: BBC, ITV, RTE

I would think this will be pretty cagey. The whole thing with Argentina is that, if you’ve watched all the games, it’s taken them a while to get going. Defensively they’re actually really good because they just push the referees as far as they can and they all just happily take a booking.

It’s just the way they are they think that as long as they stop the opposition player it really doesn’t matter. Once the game starts to open up then Lionel Messi comes to the fore. He’s just been brilliant, he’s just got better and better and better and the whole team have followed his lead.

I’m looking at the French midfield, Antoine Griezmann plays out on the right and goes all over the place. I’m just thinking, who’s going to stop Messi? I don’t think they’re great defensively, France. I do think they have a little bit of a weakness.

I’ve been fortunate enough to go to so many World Cup finals and I’ve never really seen one where it’s been rock ‘n’ roll and both teams have some out and slugged it out so it’s surely going to be cagey.

I’m going to go for Argentina to Win this and there’s a little bit of my heart in that shout because I hope Lionel Messi wins it because he’s just been absolutely sensational, hasn’t he? Not just in this competition but throughout his career. When they started the competition with that loss against Saudi Arabia you looked at it and you thought, ‘Wow!’ Obviously they’ve grown into it and that’s how you win big competitions.

Everyone’s on about Kylian Mbappe v Messi but Mbappe will come again and he’ll only get better. They put him central in the semi final against Morocco late on in the game and he looked better there because he had more space to operate in.

He looks completely different playing through the middle but I think they’ll start him on the left again with Oliver Giroud as the battering ram up top. France have real pace which is a frightening thing to play against. Didier Deschamps has done a great job and he totally gets it.

It’s going to be so close but it feels like destiny for Messi in this game. We don’t really see fairy-tale endings anymore but that would be the story. I think all the neutrals are just hoping Argentina wins it. I’ll go for Argentina to win 1-0 and for Messi to get the goal.