Sport at its finest: Argentina-France delivers World Cup final for the ages

One team was from South America. The other Europe. The match was played in the Middle East.

Soccer — the game, the sport — has, yes, grown and grown here in the U.S., but for many in the audience of millions, the rules and customs remain foreign. Many were just tuning in Sunday morning looking for the NFL pregame show on Fox, only to find this experiment in the human condition exhaustively playing out on a soccer pitch.

Prior knowledge or appreciation didn’t matter, not in the face of drama and emotion and brilliance and pressure that transcends everything, that draws in everyone.

By the time Gonzalo Montiel, a 25-year-old from the outskirts of Buenos Aires, drilled home Argentina's fourth penalty kick goal to lift his home nation to the World Cup, there was no lack of appreciation for this moment of sporting perfection.

Montiel, for his part, could hardly muster a celebration. He simply ripped off his shirt and wept into it.

Those were the stakes. And that was undeniable.

Around the globe they estimated that maybe 700 million or so would watch the World Cup final and while specific numbers aren’t yet known, America assuredly contributed 10-20 million or more of that despite a 10 a.m. ET start time.

That’s in part because you didn’t need to know whether Mbappé was a person or a place, to get consumed. This was sport at its finest, a heavyweight battle of back and forth and back again, greatness in all ways giving everything and then everything more for victory.

Argentina won 4-2 on penalty kicks, breaking an exhausting 3-3 tie by calmly converting all four attempts in what has to be the most gut-wrenching way to end such a competition. It allowed Argentina to survive not one, but two epic French comebacks and a historic, hat-trick effort from star Kylian Mbappé.

This was everything anyone could ask for. The spectacle. The saves. The conflicting action that at times felt like you were watching a car crash in progress. There were the two times that Argentina was on the brink of glory, only to have their hearts nearly snatched from their chests. There were fans crying in the stands, both after goals scored and conceded.

This was the kind of event that keeps cardiologists busy, the beautiful game at its beautiful best, both excessively simple and outrageously complicated.

There was Lionel Messi, at 35, nearing the end of his glorious career, recording two goals and setting up another with a secondary, or hockey assist, if you will. His second goal came in the 108th minute, part of a superhuman effort where he simply willed the Argentines to the brink.

Yet he was matched step by step by Mbappé, the 23-year-old sensation who with France trailing 2-0 scored from the penalty mark in the 80th minute and then had another one with a sublime shot just 96 seconds later to spin everything around.

Then, just moments after Messi put it home in that second half of extra time, seemingly shutting the door, Mbappé was back with another penalty kick goal in the 118th minute to force the shootout. Once there, both men converted, a last reminder of their class.

Along the way there were gutsy saves by Argentina’s Emiliano Martinez and France’s Hugo Lloris, not to mention blocks by defenders and sprawling efforts across the pitch.

Many of the millions watching back in America had no rooting interest. Many did, of course.

The sport’s popularity among its core fans has grown exponentially through the decades. Messi, in particular, is especially popular here, but so too is Mbappé, his club teammate at Paris Saint-Germain.

Yet you didn’t need to know the backstories or the career arcs or the historic national angst involved.

You just knew it existed.

The chance to see the best in the world at something, perform at just that level, try at that level, give everything — physically, emotionally, spiritually — at that level, was more than enough.

From living room couches to barstools, there were yelps and screams and smiles for soccer in ways that rarely occur.

Especially for a non-American team.

For two-and-a-half hours on Sunday, soccer gripped this country in ways and numbers that maybe it's never before achieved. Its vice tightened as the audience built. That doesn’t mean anything for the future. This is no proclamation that the world’s game is about to become America’s game.

It will continue to build, but this was just a moment, and should be appreciated as such; a glorious, if unexpected, moment.

On Sunday, the best of Argentina and the best of France gave America a look into the best of this sport.

You could celebrate with the Argentines, you could mourn with the French, you could appreciate the career pinnacle of Lionel Messi and soak in the generational greatness of Kylian Mbappé. You could just scream with a combination of excitement and horror.

This was sports. This was life.

This was awesome.