When it comes to foot­ball, mon­ey can buy the world.

It can pay for the World Cup. And the world’s best play­ers. And it can bun­dle them all up in­to a per­fect pack­age and present it to a glob­al au­di­ence of mil­lions.

The pow­er of mon­ey was on full dis­play in the Qatari city of Lu­sail on Sun­day as Ar­genti­na beat France 4-2 on penal­ties to be­come world cham­pi­on for the third time and end Li­onel Mes­si’s pur­suit of the one ma­jor tro­phy that had elud­ed him in his sto­ried ca­reer.

One of the most thrilling fi­nals in the tour­na­ment’s 92-year his­to­ry fin­ished 3-3 through ex­tra time, with Mes­si scor­ing twice and Kylian Mbap­pé com­plet­ing a hat trick.

“The match was com­plete­ly in­sane,” Ar­genti­na coach Li­onel Scaloni said af­ter­wards. “I know it’s just a foot­ball game, a World Cup, and we shouldn’t think any fur­ther, but in Ar­genti­na, foot­ball is not just foot­ball. We have to cel­e­brate.”

In the end it was not a bad re­turn for Qatar, which spent an es­ti­mat­ed $200 bil­lion on stag­ing soc­cer’s most pres­ti­gious event.

Hun­dreds of mil­lions more have been paid out to take su­per­stars Mes­si and Mbap­pé to Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Ger­main.

And here, on the sport’s biggest stage of all, was the per­fect fi­nale as far as the oil-and-gas rich Emi­rate was con­cerned.

On a tem­po­rary stage in the mid­dle of the field, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, gave Mes­si a Qatari cer­e­mo­ni­al robe to wear over his Ar­genti­na shirt for the tra­di­tion­al World Cup tro­phy lift.

Mes­si was beam­ing with pride as he ten­der­ly kissed the cup of sol­id gold. But it is ar­guably the host coun­try that could con­sid­er it­self the biggest win­ner af­ter a tour­na­ment that ap­peared to demon­strate the ef­fec­tive­ness of so-called “sports­wash­ing”.

Af­ter wide­spread crit­i­cism about its hu­man rights record and treat­ment of mi­grant work­ers lead­ing up to the event, the fo­cus switched to soc­cer as the tour­na­ment pro­gressed. By Sun­day’s fi­nal, the nar­ra­tive was fixed on Mes­si’s mis­sion to em­u­late Ar­genti­na great Diego Maradona by lead­ing his coun­try to a World Cup ti­tle.

The sub­plot was France’s bid to be­come the first team to win the tro­phy back-to-back since Brazil and Pele in 1958 and ’62.

“It was al­ways in­evitable that the con­ver­sa­tion would in­creas­ing­ly turn to foot­ball once the tour­na­ment start­ed, but hu­man rights ques­tions have nev­er gone away and will con­tin­ue to be raised long af­ter the tour­na­ment,” Steve Cock­burn, head of eco­nom­ic and so­cial jus­tice at Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Amnesty says thou­sands of mi­grant work­ers have died “sud­den­ly and un­ex­pect­ed­ly” in Qatar over the past decade.

Last month Has­san al-Thawa­di, the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of Qatar’s Supreme Com­mit­tee for De­liv­ery and Lega­cy, said be­tween 400 and 500 had died dur­ing con­struc­tion for the tour­na­ment. The com­mit­tee lat­er said he was re­fer­ring to work-re­lat­ed deaths from 2014-2020, not specif­i­cal­ly for the World Cup.

Soc­cer’s gov­ern­ing body FI­FA has been pres­sured to pro­vide an­swers on a pro­posed com­pen­sa­tion fund for those af­fect­ed and the con­cept of a mi­grant work­ers cen­ter to be cre­at­ed in Do­ha.

Progress on both of those is­sues re­mains un­clear.

“Qatar wants to be a hub for glob­al sport­ing and cul­tur­al events, and so should know that scruti­ny will con­tin­ue,” Cock­burn said. “Host­ing the World Cup has brought far more at­ten­tion on the treat­ment of mi­grant work­ers in Qatar and the rest of the Gulf than would oth­er­wise have been the case, as well as the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of sport­ing bod­ies such as FI­FA.”

Con­cerns were al­so raised over the safe­ty and well­be­ing of fans from the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty ahead of the tour­na­ment be­cause ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a crim­i­nal of­fense in Qatar.

Cap­tains of sev­en Eu­ro­pean na­tions, in­clud­ing Eng­land and Ger­many, planned to wear mul­ti-coloured “One Love” arm­bands to pro­mote in­clu­sion and di­ver­si­ty. But they ul­ti­mate­ly backed down when FI­FA threat­ened to is­sue yel­low cards to the play­ers in­volved, say­ing it was a con­tra­ven­tion of its reg­u­la­tions.

It is un­clear whether that de­ci­sion was tak­en un­der pres­sure from the Qatari gov­ern­ment, but it added to the sense that the con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim coun­try was host­ing the World Cup on its own terms.

There was al­so a sud­den ban on beer sales at sta­di­ums two days be­fore the open­ing match, which was a U-turn on the deal Qatar made to se­cure the tour­na­ment.

The term “sports­wash­ing” is wide­ly used in ref­er­ence to coun­tries or or­ga­ni­za­tions try­ing to use sports to re­pair rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age.

And the World Cup de­flect­ed at­ten­tion from off-field is­sues by pro­duc­ing some re­mark­able sto­ries on it.

Sau­di Ara­bia pro­vid­ed ar­guably the biggest shock in the tour­na­ment’s 92-year his­to­ry by beat­ing Ar­genti­na in their open­ing group-stage match.

Mo­roc­co be­came the first African coun­try to make it through to the se­mi-fi­nals and sparked an out­pour­ing of pride across the Arab world.

“For me, foot­ball makes peo­ple dream and chil­dren in par­tic­u­lar,” Mo­roc­co coach Walid Re­gragui said. “In Mo­roc­co and Africa, we have kept those dreams alive.”

Per­haps pre­dictably, FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no de­scribed it as the “best World Cup ever.”

How­ev­er, he is not the on­ly one to speak about it in pos­i­tive terms.

“Qatar have won a lot of friends be­cause of this World Cup and the way it has been han­dled,” said David Dein, the in­ter­na­tion­al pres­i­dent of Eng­land’s bids for the 2018 and ’22 World Cups.

He at­tend­ed more than 50 games dur­ing the tour­na­ment and be­lieves the ex­pe­ri­ence will in­spire re­al change in Qatar.

“They’ve been very open-mind­ed to it,” he added. “I think Qatar will ben­e­fit from this go­ing for­ward. I hope so. That should be a lega­cy for them.”

It is cer­tain­ly easy to see the im­me­di­ate ben­e­fit.

Qatar will for­ev­er be as­so­ci­at­ed with Mes­si af­ter he fi­nal­ly won the World Cup and fur­ther strength­ened his case to be con­sid­ered the great­est play­er of all time.

“It took so long, but here it is,” Mes­si said. “Ob­vi­ous­ly, I want­ed to com­plete my ca­reer with this, (I) can’t ask for more.”

At 35, Mes­si was the sto­ry of what is like­ly his last World Cup, and the nar­ra­tive be­came more com­pelling with every win, every goal and every as­sist that pro­vid­ed flash­es of the bril­liance he pro­duced with more reg­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing his peak years.

That the fi­nal de­vel­oped in­to a per­son­al du­el be­tween him and PSG team­mate Mbap­pé added an­oth­er thread to a cap­ti­vat­ing con­test.

Mbap­pé is the nat­ur­al heir to Mes­si and Cris­tiano Ronal­do as soc­cer’s next su­per­star and he scored the first hat trick in a World Cup fi­nal in 56 years.

He was al­so the tour­na­ment’s lead­ing scor­er with eight goals, en­sur­ing an­oth­er of Qatar’s great in­vest­ments was on the podi­um to col­lect a tro­phy in the end.

But the en­dur­ing im­age of a World Cup was one of the world’s great­est ever play­ers, in tra­di­tion­al Qatari dress, lift­ing the sport’s biggest prize of all. —DO­HA, Qatar (AP)

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Sto­ry by JAMES ROB­SON | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press