This is simply incredible. After 120+ minutes of thrilling football, Argentina and France find themselves in a penalty shootout with the World Cup on the line. After going through a phenomenal group stage and thrilling knockout rounds throughout this tourney, it really doesn’t get any better than this.

But before we see what comes next, we need to understand how this chaos somehow topped the last meeting between these two nations, why we’re in the Middle East in the dead of winter, and what a win would mean for two of the game’s top stars, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi. For Mbappé, a victory would further solidify his status as one of football’s best, adding a second World Cup to his very young, promising career. For Messi, it could very well be his last World Cup in a career filled with countless accomplishments, yet a trophy that’s eluded him for years.