Qatar World Cup ends with greatest final and a coronation for Lionel Messi | Barney Ronay

After 12 years, shredded schedules and a whirl of geopolitics; after death and ghosts and suffering; after armbands, hard power, the Davos in the desert vibe; after 64 games of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, the Lusail Stadium dished up a purely sporting surprise.

This was the greatest Fifa World Cup final. It was also a third World Cup victory for Argentina, who beat France on penalties at the end of a wildly oscillating 3-3 draw.

More tellingly, it was also a kind of coronation, belatedly, for the greatest footballer of the age, probably of any age, the mooching 35-year-old mobile brain Lionel Messi, a thousand games into his astonishing career.

Eventually he broke free and walked off, waving both hands, all alone in the chaos apart from a single passing cameraman sensing his own money shot. How fitting, in the end, that Messi should celebrate a World Cup the same way he won it, by walking around on his own.

This was a Messi story in so many ways. Messi scored six goals at Qatar 2022 and won the Golden Ball as the best player. He toyed with some of the greatest footballers on earth. He did all this aged 35 and semi-injured. This is not normal. At some stage it will start to stretch the bounds of credibility.

Plus he is part of the wider story of this $7bn sporting extravaganza. As Messi was given the World Cup trophy he was handed a robe to wear by the emir of Qatar, who is also his employer.

You get what you pay for, and Qatar achieved its perfect final here. You have to admire the thoroughness, a blueprint that says we will not only pay for the World Cup but for the players who are most likely to be on the podium at the end: a Messi, an Mbappé, paid ambassadors of Qatar Sports Investments via dizzying contracts with Paris Saint-Germain. This is the real thing: end-to-end fully encrypted sportswashing. It is an incredible feat of will.

But there is also a paradox in Messi winning this divisive and physically brutal of World Cups. There have always been two World Cups at Qatar 2022. First, the one Qatar built out of human wastage, the one that has held a mirror up not only to the depravity of big sport, but to a global labour market that drives migrant workers into lucrative near-captivity; a system Qatar did not create, which it has simply embodied with manic hypercompetence.

He was sublime all game. From the start the colours were perfect. The deep French blue, the Albiceleste of Argentina, the lime-green grass, the cold white stadium lights. The opening five minutes of any Messi performance have been much discussed in recent weeks. Messi spends those five minutes watching.

Messi duly scored the opening goal from the spot, made by Di María. The second for Argentina was a wonderful team goal. Messi had a hand at the start, producing a sublime 45-degree pass. Di María finished expertly, then just kind of collapsed, drunk on the glory, the noise the space, the light.

Argentina had gone. The team that seemed to be romping like handsome schoolboys towards glory looked frazzled, lost, done. Then Argentina came back, scoring again through Messi, before Mbappé levelled it again from the spot. Then came penalties and that final moment of grace.