Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo the biggest winners of the Messi-less World Cup final

After the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup 2026 final came to an end, its winners and losers immediately became evident.

Whilst Spain were the actual winners, their win wasn’t probably as big a win for them as for Kylian Mbappe of France and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal.

And Argentina’s loss wasn’t an Argentina’s per se but a Lionel Messi’s.

With the final, Messi had the great opportunity to become the tournament’s highest goalscorer and World Cup’s goalscorer overall and snatch both those records from Mbappe who achieved them earlier on the same day.

Sadly, he fluffed the very great once-in-a-lifetime opportunity badly.

And as for Ronaldo, a second World Cup medal for Messi would definitely have been a very bad look for him in their perennial GOAT battle.

Messi’s inability, though, to win the second World Cup that was well-within his grasp has however negated all the pre-final talk of him being the greatest athlete ever in the world that arose from only the belief that he would win the World Cup 2026.

Oh well, life is just like that.

It can change in a second, a minute, an hour, a year or whenever either for the positive or the negative.

And in the case of football as well, fortunes can also change in a second, a few minutes of play or just a game, and it is this latter, just one game, that changed so many things for Messi that made him lose very greatly whilst his closest rivals, Mbappe and Ronaldo, gained very greatly.

Oh well, such is life.