The most anticipated sports tournament in 2022 was the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, with a total of 3.57 billion viewers. This tournament only happens every four years. The world qualifiers determine which teams have a spot to compete for the trophy. During the early stages of the tournament, teams are randomly grouped and later are determined by stages. Once the group stages are done, the team with the most points gets to go to the knockout stages, but with just one loss, they’re out of the running. The 2022 FIFA, also known as the Federation Internationale De Football Association World Cup was held in Qatar on November 20, 2022.
The opening ceremony displays many symbolic indications. It showcases the Arab culture and its amazing qualities, with a focus on music. After the opening ceremony, the first match of the FIFA World Cup kicked off with Qatar and Ecuador facing off. The match was one of many
that the world would get to watch, the game ending 0-2 with Ecuador as the winner of the first match. New technology was used in the World Cup this year as well. With the preciseness of this new technology, each match was bound to be mistake-free. The new ball created by Adidas was developed within 3 years. Al Rihla is now capable of providing data 500 times a second. This means this World Cup was extremely accurate, also including VAR which can dictate if a play is onside or reasonable. The World Cup consists of 32 teams. According to FIFA, the
following teams are the highest ranked and with the most probability of winning: Brazil, Belgium, Argentina, France, England, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. The favorites out of all of these were Argentina, France, Brazil, Portugal, and England. France, England, and Brazil were popular because they were one of the select few teams that had a strong lineup for this tournament. The popularity
of these teams extends to their notorious rosters, consisting of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. After the many incredible group stage games, there were amazing goals scored, great team plays, and shockers. After all the results, the teams to made it to the knockout stages were the Netherlands, USA, Argentina, Australia, Japan, Croatia, Brazil, South Korea, France, Poland, England Senegal, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. These teams faced off to earn their spot in the quarter-finals. After the “round of 16” was taken, the teams who were knocked out were the USA, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Senegal, Spain, and Switzerland. These games were incredible to watch due to the fact that a highly ranked and favorite team was knocked out by the lowest-ranked team that qualified. Many spectators were
surprised to see Morocco defeat Spain. The world wasn’t ready for what was coming up next. The winners of the quarterfinals were Argentina, Croatia, France, and Morocco. Morocco was the only African and Arab team to advance to the World Cup semi-finals after Portugal suffered a devastating loss to Morocco in the quarter-finals. Ronaldo was out of the World Cup. The heat turned up during the semi-finals. France At this point, France would make it to the World Cup to win twice in a row. This was Lionel Messi’s final World Cup. Morocco could be the first African team to make it this far in the tournament. Croatia could make it to the end.
The games were fierce and entertaining, but in the end, the final match was Argentina versus France. Although many had opinions, the outcome was ambiguous. For many fans, it seemed as though it was more like Messi versus Mbappe than Argentina versus France. The game went into extra time, then in the 108th minute, the back-and-forth scoring had everyone on the edge of their seats. The last penalty was from Argentina when Montiel was up. In the end, Argentina won the 2022 World Cup, marking it as its third win since the 1986 victory.
