The home dressing room at Lusail Stadium is in something of a mess.

Bottles lie scattered, used tape is strewn on the seats, and the floor is damp with sweat, water and champagne, with perhaps a tear or two mixed in. Amid the detritus lies a piece of paper with numbers scribbled out in black and blue marker pen. That piece of paper maps out the defensive system that Argentina used whenever France got on the ball in final of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, played in Lusail on 18 December last year. FIFA+ got its hands on that very sheet, kept hold of it and then showed it to Albiceleste coach Lionel Scaloni a few weeks later. “Yes, yes, that’s my handwriting, my ugly handwriting, but that’s how I like to write it out, with all the numbers,” said the man himself, who turns 45 on 16 May. “My instructions changed from game to game but, by and large, I think that’s a pretty good indication of how we thought the game might pan out.”

Continuing what was a fascinating chat in which he revealed some but not all of his plan for defeating Didier Deschamps’s side, Scaloni added: “It’s not that difficult either to understand what we did. The important thing was to put it into practice on the pitch, because sometimes you can come up with all the ideas you want only for them not to work when you go out there. “When we knew we were playing France, and from having watched them against Morocco [in the semi-final], we had it clear in our minds that Angel Di Maria was going to play on the left. We didn’t tell them until an hour before the game, and that was the key to it I think, because we didn’t give anyone the chance to find out about it. Everyone knows everything these days and it can be counterproductive.” As Scaloni went on to reveal, his plan had three main focal points. The first was France playing with only three defenders when in possession, with the left-back [Theo Hernandez or Eduardo Camavinga] pushing into the midfield and [Jules] Kounde operating as a right-sided central defender. That meant space and opportunities, which is where Di Maria came in. Point two was the need to take control of the inside channel that Antoine Griezmann had made his own throughout the tournament. The man handed that task was Alexis Mac Allister. “We needed to somehow counteract the way they attacked, with Griezmann popping up between the lines and using that channel to get forward, which could have caused us problems,” explained Scaloni. “That’s why Alexis was there, keeping a close eye on that move in particular. “We let [Ousmane] Dembele go free because there was time to close him down if it went wide. And we had Rodrigo [De Paul] giving [Nahuel] Molina a hand with Mbappe the whole time. Those were the weapons we had. We needed Alexis to be on Griezmann because he’s very good, one of the best in the world at making those movements.”

Point three was how to mark Mbappe, the most dangerous forward in the world. “What we didn’t want was Cuti [Cristian Romero] covering Mbappe, or rather Cuti covering Molina and coming out to the flank. We wanted Cuti to be inside with Giroud and Rodrigo covering or Enzo [Fernandez] doing it if he had to. But as you can imagine, he [Mbappe] is a player you have to keep an eye on. “The first thing we had to do, though, was to stay very, very close to him. Then, if the ball did go deep and in behind the defenders, Cuti could be there to keep an eye on things. But the idea was that whenever he got on the ball, there’d be one or two players close by. Ultimately, you can't afford to give players like him even a yard.” Scaloni then dissected Argentina’s second goal in detail. “Julian [Alvarez] was on the central midfielder the whole time, which gave Leo [Lionel Messi] a bit more freedom. You could see that in that move, because it was a ball from Nahuel to Alexis, who was in the middle and, almost without looking, saw Leo over his shoulder.

"Julian made the move on the outside and Angel appeared on the other side totally unmarked, which is more or less what we were looking for. We didn’t want him to stay back and mark Dembele, firstly because that’s not his game, and secondly because he had to be fresh to keep on attacking Kounde.”

The interview over, Scaloni was offered the chance to keep the piece of paper or make a copy as a keepsake. The coach pondered the invitation for a couple of seconds, then said: “No, no. I’ve got it all in my head!”