“Everything changed for me that day.” 

During an interview with journalist Andy Kusnetzoff last January, Lionel Messi articulated the feelings of millions of Argentines when Gonzalo Montiel buried his penalty kick against France, clinching the nation’s third World Cup title and first since 1986.

It was a triumph years in the making. After losing in the finals to Germany in 2014 and bombing out of the tournament in the round of 16 four years later, the Albiceleste was finally able to break through, providing the country with a rare moment of national unity. For a few glorious weeks, people were able to put aside their differences and share each other’s fears, loyalties, and devotions. That it may have been Messi’s last World Cup appearance just made Argentina’s victory that much sweeter.

Emotions have since calmed, but the victory has become the stuff of legend. Here’s what football fans and analysts had to say on the one-year anniversary of Argentina’s historic win.

‘I can die in peace’  

Federico Praml worried that he might never see Argentina lift a World Cup trophy.

“December 18, 2022, was the day I dreamed of living all my life,” the Argentine journalist told the Herald from his apartment in Barcelona, where he’s been living since 2017. “It was something I’d always felt. ‘I can’t die without knowing how it feels to win a World Cup.’ I needed to live through that.”

Praml, who declined the opportunity to travel to Qatar in order to experience the World Cup in Argentina, maintains that he always felt Argentina was going to win.

“Learning about the death of [Diego] Maradona in Barcelona was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced,” he continued. “I’ve never felt as far from my country, physically or emotionally. So I needed the World Cup to become an Argentine memory, filled with barbecue smoke, summer days, and fernet.”

Others, like the Argentine journalist Andrés Burgo, had only experienced World Cup glory as a distant childhood memory.

“My oldest memory is of the celebrations after Argentina won the 1978 World Cup, when I was just three years old,” Burgo, who chronicled Qatar 2022 from Buenos Aires in his book Nuestro Mundial (Our World Cup), told the Herald. 

“When [Gonzalo] Montiel scored the last penalty, I went looking for my son,” he continued. “I jumped on top of him, crying. I told him this was something he was never going to forget.”

Celebrations abroad

Christopher Hylland, author of the football travelogue Tears at La Bombonera, had never experienced anything quite like it.

“Every Argentine was pushing for it,” he told the Herald. “Nobody said, ‘I’m not watching it.’ And nobody failed to shed a tear with it or experienced it as anything but a magical moment.”

A Norwegian writer who lived in Buenos Aires for several years, Hylland recounted watching the final against France in Oslo. Although he watched the match with 30 some-odd Argentines, it felt like a lot more.

“When Argentina won, the fans started to stand on the tables singing, and the organizers ended up kicking us out,” he said. “It was a culture clash; at first they thought it was funny, but then it reached a level of craziness they had never experienced. I think they didn’t understand the context and the importance of the win.”

Burgo maintains that the celebrations were a cathartic release after years of suffering — both on and off the pitch. 

“Quarantine was arduous and challenging,” he said. “The national team gifted a new generation that had never seen Argentina crowned champions a reason for joy. That was the birth of something for them.”

Prior to the 2021 Copa America, Argentina had experienced a 28-year dry spell, with the likes of Diego Simeone and Gabriel Batistuta leading the team to its last tournament victory.

“It was a painful period for the Argentine national team,” said Praml. “Whether you like it or not, Argentines are glory hunters. We support ideas and processes, but in the end, we all want to appear on the cover [of a newspaper], lifting a trophy.”

Argentina’s new national hero

Perhaps no one understood this better than the Albiceleste’s captain, Lionel Messi, who suffered the slings and arrows of the Argentine public for his failures to deliver a title. Hylland wonders whether Messi’s legacy would be the same had Montiel not converted his penalty kick.

“The margins are very small,” he said. “Lose and you’re a failure; win and you’re a success. Now everything has Messi’s face, shirt number, or name on it. How would he have been treated if they hadn’t won?”

One year removed from Argentina’s triumph, adulation for Messi is one of the few things that its people still share. 

“In a society where common ground is rare, that became universal,” Burgo said. “Messi and others like [Emiliano] “Dibu” Martínez or [Ángel] Di María became new national heroes; they are a new part of this country’s heritage.”

For Praml, the World Cup could have only ended one way.

“There is a universal sense of justice with Messi being world champion,” he said. “It was something that needed to happen, and as time went by, the more unfair it seemed. Now that is settled. It is the photo that we all wanted to see, and it’s something that transcends nationalities.”