Messi will take the headlines, but France's Kylian Mbappe was arguably the best performer at the Lusail Stadium on Sunday night as his hat-trick pushed Argentina all the way.
Twice Mbappe inspired a France comeback to take the game to penalties by scoring the first World Cup final hat-trick since Geoff Hurst's for England in 1966.
France head coach Didier Deschamps felt that Mbappe's involvement would be remembered regardless of Les Bleus missing out on a successive World Cup trophy.
"Kylian has really left his mark on this final," Deschamps said. "But unfortunately he didn't leave it in the way he would have liked and that's why he was so disappointed at the end of the match like all of the players."
Deschamps was gutted after the game and said France "came back from the dead" against Argentina.
"Obviously we have some regrets about that first part of the match and then we go into extra-time, where we could have won it in the last minute," he said. "Unfortunately, it didn't go in and then it went to penalties.
"There were a number of reasons why we just weren't quite as good as we could have been, and we had a very strong opponent.
"We were perhaps lacking a little bit of energy. Some of our key players were lacking that energy.
"But, nonetheless, we had some young, more inexperienced players who came on and brought some freshness and quality and they managed to get us back into the match and keep the dream alive.
"But unfortunately at the end of the day we couldn't achieve that dream."
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