It all started during a family barbecue last weekend. My nephew, Jake, who is maybe 15 and thinks he’s a football savant, was arguing with my brother-in-law. Jake loudly proclaimed, “Mbappe won both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups; he’s the greatest.” My brother-in-law, a Diehard Messi fan, instantly fired back, “He lost 2022, you idiot! Only a hat-trick in a loss.”
They were getting so heated, yelling about penalties and Golden Boots and whether a loss with three goals is better than a win with one. They were circling the grill, throwing raw facts and pure guesswork at each other. Honestly, I was just trying to flip the steaks and not burn my eyebrows off, but this argument kept going around and around, a real mess, poisoning the entire atmosphere.
That’s usually how my personal ‘documentations’ start—out of pure annoyance. I got tired of the noise, the emotional spin overriding the simple facts. I pulled out my old, slightly greasy tablet right there, sat down on the patio steps, and told them both to shut up. I decided I needed to settle it, just for my own sanity and to shut down the chaos. The facts, as I always document, are the facts. No more shouting. So here’s what I did, step by practical step, to pin down the truth about his “legendary finals.”
The Nitty-Gritty Process: Digging Up The Real Scores
The first thing I did was treat the problem like a simple database query. I needed two pieces of data: Result of the 2018 Final, and Result of the 2022 Final. Simple binary stuff: Win or Loss. The details (scores, goals) were secondary but necessary for the full record.
My entire process was manual and aimed at cross-checking because you can’t trust the first thing that pops up on Google when emotions are running high. Here’s the list of actions I documented from the start, a quick five-minute sprint:
- Action 1: Used a simple search term: “2018 World Cup Final Score.”
- Observation 1: Immediately saw France vs. Croatia. Final score: 4–2 to France. That’s a confirmed win for Mbappe’s team.
- Action 2: Searched within the result for “Mbappe 2018 Final Goal.”
- Observation 2: Confirmed he scored one goal, France’s fourth goal. So, Win + One Goal. Case closed for 2018.
The next part was the one Jake and my brother-in-law were fighting over. The one where the performance was so huge it seemed to distort the outcome:
- Action 3: Used the search term: “2022 World Cup Final Score.”
- Observation 3: Argentina vs. France. The score was 3–3 after extra time, then a penalty shootout (4–2). The final result was a confirmed loss for France.
- Action 4: Searched for “Mbappe goals 2022 Final.”
- Observation 4: Confirmed he scored three goals (the famous hat-trick), plus one goal in the penalty shootout (which doesn’t count towards the game total). The team lost despite his monumental effort.
I read the final summary out loud, and both of them finally shut up. The simple, non-emotional truth was documented. But why did Jake, and so many others, get it wrong? Why does the legend overshadow the loss?
When The Story Overrides The Actual Fact
Why do I bother documenting these simple things? Why not just say, “Google it,” and move on? Because facts get twisted, man. They get blurred so fast, especially when the story is better than the reality. Look at Mbappe—the 2022 performance was so insane (three goals in a final!), that people just assume he won, because a performance that epic should win. The legend completely covers the loss. This is exactly what sunk my last job.
I know this feeling. I lived it a few years back when I was managing a big project—a huge, six-month rollout for a fintech client. The core truth, the one simple fact, was that API X, handled by a separate team, was never finished. Not 80% finished, not bug-filled, but zero percent complete. I documented this fact in every weekly report, starting from Month 3. I practically screamed it in the meetings, showing the incomplete status reports from the other guys.
But my CEO, who loved the “story” and the hype more than reality, kept telling the client, “We are launching on time, full features ready!” The story was that the launch was going to be heroic, a testament to our team’s hustle. Everyone loved that story. They ignored my documented facts, my emails, my status updates. They even deleted my section from the final presentation deck.
The system, predictably, crumbled the second we pushed it live. User data was lost; transactions failed. The ensuing mess was catastrophic. Who took the heat? Not the CEO, who sold the lie. Not the API team, who simply didn’t deliver. Me. I was the one who had all the documentation, the proof, the facts, but I was also the last one who touched the release code. I was pulled into a room, handed my termination papers, and told I “mismanaged” the integration timeline. My clear, documented truth was completely ignored in favor of the CEO’s preferred narrative—that I failed, not his strategy or the other team’s incompetence.
That event changed how I look at everything. Now, no matter how simple or mundane the fact is—whether it’s an API readiness report or a World Cup score—I practice documenting it, sharing the process, and fighting the narrative with pure, raw data. So, to answer the argument that started the barbecue chaos:
Mbappe won the World Cup in 2018 (4-2 against Croatia). He lost the World Cup in 2022 (3-3, 4-2 on penalties against Argentina).
There. Documented. Facts over fiction, every single time.