The final in New York belonged only to memory, and that is why the question keeps coming back: who won the 2022 World Cup? In this retelling, the answer is tied to France and Croatia, with the 2022 FIFA World Cup final ending 4:2 and joining a chain of finals that still define how the game is remembered.
That matters because the piece does not treat the 2022 final as a standalone result. It places it beside the 2018 final, France against Croatia again, and the older World Cup finals that made the scorelines feel like landmarks: Germany against Italy in 1982, Argentina against Germany in 1986, Brazil against Italy in 1994. The search for the 2022 winner is really a search for where this final sits in that memory.
Dračanin A. B gives the story its sharpest human note. In 1992, he asked: “Guys, do you know what my biggest nightmare is? In '94, Brazil and Italy are playing the World Cup final, and we are liberating Mojkovac.” The line only works because the 1994 final ended 0:0 before Brazil won its fourth title, and because the fear was not the result alone but the collision of public life and private obsession.
That same collision explains the friction running through the list. The 2018 final is presented as “our” team’s final, yet it is also called the biggest disappointment. The contradiction is not a mistake; it is the point. A final can belong to memory, to pride, and to regret all at once, and the scoreline does not settle which feeling lasts longer. The older finals sharpen that idea: Germany was seen as the favorite before 1982, then lost to Italy 3:1; the Dutch fell to Germany 2:1 in 1974 and to Argentina 3:1 after extra time in 1978; Argentina then beat Germany 3:2 after extra time in 1986.
So the answer to who won the 2022 World Cup, as this account frames it, is France and Croatia as the match’s named pair, with France coming out 4:2 in the final. But the larger answer is that the final in New York is being used as a memory map, not a scoreboard. It points backward as much as forward, and what comes next is not a new result but the next final that someone will carry into memory the same way.
