World Cup semifinals: The boy, the captain, the prince, and the king
Argentina’s Lionel Messi strives to match his idol, England’s Harry Kane chases a validation that has eluded him for a decade, France’s Kylian Mbappe is hunting a double crown, and Spain’s Lamine Yamal, barely out of school, wants to announce he already belongs.
Four men, four ages, four different reasons to want the same trophy, and only one road left to New Jersey.
Between Wednesday's clash in Dallas between France and Spain and Thursday's collision in Atlanta between Argentina and England, these four will decide who reaches the final.
The Boy
Lamine Yamal turned 19 on July 13, an age at which most footballers are still fighting for a place in a matchday squad, let alone a World Cup semifinal.
He has not dazzled at this tournament the way he did at Euro 2024, hampered by a hamstring injury that robbed him of match sharpness heading into the summer.
Yet opposition coaches still build entire game plans around denying him space, a tribute paid to few teenagers in the sport's history, and proof of what he represents.
Wednesday's semifinal against France offers Yamal a stage the boy has already outgrown once before, against these very opponents, in a Euros final two summers ago.
Should Spain go all the way, Yamal would lift the World Cup before his twentieth birthday, a feat that would place him instantly among the game's great prodigies.
The Captain
Harry Kane has spent his England career being brilliant at the wrong moments, for a team that always seemed to fall just short of him.
Now 32, supposedly past his explosive best, Kane finds himself exactly where he has never been before: one match from a World Cup final, with the weight of 1966 on his shoulders.
He leads by example rather than theatre, the steady captain around whom Jude Bellingham's brilliance has flourished.
A trophy would not just crown Kane's career. It would rewrite the entire narrative of the nearly-man, transforming years of gallant failure into the platform for English football's greatest moment.
The Prince
Mbappe already has a World Cup winner's medal, earned as a teenager in 2018, and the scars of 2022, when his final hat-trick still ended in defeat.
This time he arrives as France's undisputed leader, the spine of an attack that has scored sixteen goals in six matches, terrifying every defence unfortunate enough to face him.
Ousmane Dembele and Michael Olise orbit him, dangerous in their own right, but it is Mbappe defenders scheme against first, the name that decides team talks before kickoff.
Victory on Wednesday against Spain, and then in the final, would settle an argument still raging in football's loudest bars: who is truly the best player alive, right now.
The King
At 39, every touch Messi takes now carries the weight of an ending. This is his last World Cup, and the football world knows it.
He arrived in this tournament already having conquered football. All that remains is become the first Argentine to lead the Albiceleste to two World Cup trophies – a feat even Diego Maradona failed to achieve.
There has been mortality in his football this summer, flashes rather than fire. Still, from the group stages to the knockouts, in Argentina’s time of need, the old sorcery returned and delivered as many as eight goals.
On Thursday’s semifinal against England – his first ever meeting with the opponents – he will either get one step closer to a second world title or fall agonisingly short of playing in his third World Cup final.