10-goal World Cup 3rd place battle

I've been told by some friends of mine both domestic and international that despite the fact that this 3rd place battle is a big event for some people that the participating teams tend to not put as much into winning this game as they would almost any other match that takes place in the World Cup.

I suppose it is easy to understand why that could be: The 3rd place position is largely ceremonial and doesn't really carry the amount of prestige with it that other games would despite the fact that it is further down the line than other knockout stages of the WC.

Like most people, I decided to skip this one in lieu of preparing for the final between Argentina and Spain tonight and when I woke up this morning and saw that it had the largest scoreline of any match in the World Cup this year, I was a bit disappointed that I decided to skip this one.

It took only 3 minutes for the first goal to be scored by England then just another 15 minutes for the 2nd goal to be scored.

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In fact, England would end up being 4-0 up before France even put one in the back of the net.

Now when you look at a scoreline of this sort, it is easy to think that perhaps the rumors that my friends were telling me about the players not putting their all into this match could be true. If you think about it, the decision to step off the gas a bit does actually make a lot of sense. These players are all very valuable to the clubs that they play for and it is probably expected that after getting eliminated from contention for the cup that most players would start to look at the real value of themselves and find it rather important to stay away from injury above all else.

But this didn't stop Mbappe, who many consider to be the best player in the world at the moment, from putting on a show early in the 2nd half to bring the score to 4-3. I would imagine that this probably made everyone on the pitch try a bit harder because we now have a really good game on our hands and England, even if they were taking it a bit easy after putting 4 back, seriously wouldn't want to lose a game after going up 4 goals to none.

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Mbappe made history with his 2 goals early in the 2nd half as he became the all time World Cup leading scorer with 22 goals. He leapt over Lionel Messi and now we have another reason to be excited about tonight's game because Messi currently has 21. This just adds a bit more excitement to the match but I think we all know that Messi is not going to use this as a reason to be a "ball hog" and will be shooting instead for the overall victory. Who knows? I do think all eyes will be on him and there will be a lot of controversy stirred up if it so much as appears that he is at all selfish during their attacks.

I at times ruffle the feathers of non-Americans when I am bit judgmental about football of the soccer variety because I state that the average American has a hard time getting on board with games that can end in a 0-0 draw. It isn't often that a game gets 10 goals scored in it and the fact that I don't even know anyone that bothered to watch this is a damn shame. I am going to watch the stream today even though I already know the outcome.

The most goals ever scored in a World Cup match was back in 1954 when Austria defeated Switzerland 7-5. There are only 3 matches in all of World Cup history where 11 goals were scored. The last time 10 goals were scored in a WC match was back in 1958 so yeah, having 10 goals in this match is a real moment in history.

Both teams should be proud of this achievement even if they did approach the game with a bit of reluctance and had a ton of substitutions.

One thing that is worth noting was there wasn't a single booking of a yellow or red between both teams and this would indicate that they are indeed stepping down the intensity of play quite a lot.

Who do you have picked to win the game tonight? Spain or Argentina?