Impossible not to remember South Africa, Iniesta, Cesc, extra time, the abyss, glory. Impossible not to see it in this moment of Ferran Torres that happened ten minutes earlier, the 106th after years of celebrating the legend of the 116th. Pedri sent a ball into the area, Nico Williams left it behind with the crown of his head, and Ferran smashed the net and caused another unforgettable explosion, the second star, the second world title against the last champion, whom he reduced almost to nothing. He didn’t shoot even once until after La Roja’s goal, something unusual. No team had gone the 90 minutes of a final without trying. Neither had any until the 117th. Luis de la Fuente’s team dismantled Argentina’s legendary 10, burned them with play, pricked them with a succession of soft shots, and finished them off with a left-footed strike. He bid farewell to Messi from the World Cups with a choral exhibition.
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Spain already inhabits eternity. It appeared in South Africa, with the first version of a brilliant game script and evolved over a little more than a decade into the prodigious formula with which it won the 2024 European Championship and now the second World Cup. Impossible not to remember South Africa, which also came after a European Championship. The first star is a warning to the world, to stick your head out. The second means settling into the eternity of football.
The enthusiasm for Ferran’s goal, for the play that seemed inevitable to lead to the title, also showed something astonishing from a country immersed in tension, but that has found something on which it manages to agree to produce a creature as beautiful as this team. To produce it and to enjoy it.
The enormity of the occasion, a World Cup final, did not distort Spain. Quite the opposite. It has been built for events of this stratospheric level. It went out to weave its game and suffocate the rival with whatever stitch came out stitch by stitch. Argentina, as almost always in the World Cup, seemed to want to leave it for later, until the minutes when Messi wakes from lethargy. But it wasn’t them. It was La Roja’s overwhelming play, which reduced them like no one else.
They only had to hold on and they started by raising barricades through the center. Mac Allister, Enzo Fernández, De Paul, and Nico González crowded the area where Spain has deployed its most brilliant stretches. They found it overcrowded, but Dani Olmo maneuvers in those alleys like an escapologist negotiating with his own trap. He turned, played a wall pass with Lamine, and the Barcelona winger found himself in the area facing Dibu Martínez. Lisandro deflected the shot and the goalkeeper reacted confidently.
Spain passed the ball, Argentina maintained balance, a resistance plan that works like no other. Because no one has Messi, of course, strolling on the freshly watered grass while the rest wear themselves out, taking the rival’s measurements to tailor the suit in his head. It was early for the 10, but the Spanish defense was distracted by a ball and found itself facing Unai Simón, who accelerated to clear before he could control it. He didn’t react in time. It wasn’t the moment.
It wasn’t the route the match was expected to take either. Although Unai had to sprint again to stop a run by Julián Alvarez. It came to nothing. The signal hadn’t been triggered yet. The skirmish was going the other way. Argentina looked like it was the same old story. But no. The signal didn’t come. There was no way.
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Spain insisted with a score in which Rodri set the tempo and Olmo played the trumpet. The Blaugrana pressed the accelerator and turned the wind. They gradually looked more for Lamine Yamal, but Scaloni had prepared two full-backs to mark him, Tagliafico and Nico González. They were delimiting his territory, indicating how far they planned to let him advance. Which was little. He soon found a body hitting him from behind. Just like Oyarzabal, disconnected until he appeared through the middle, but who was also accumulating scratches from his encounters with the Argentines.
La Roja faced a hard clearing task, branch by branch, trap by trap. But this team plays with colossal confidence in the formula. It only accelerates to move forward. It doesn’t delay to contemplate itself while accumulating passes. It doesn’t show off. It listens to the strength to insert a wedge, to open a crack and launch itself through it.
Argentina accumulates hours of resistance. This time without respite, because it didn’t get the passes right. Scaloni already maneuvered at halftime. He took off Nico González and put in Paredes to keep marking Lamine, who couldn’t find a way. Messi didn’t even appear. The Barça player faced up, looked for it, but got lost in the contact with which they treated him.
After an hour of patience, De la Fuente intervened to keep pushing. Ferran came on for Oyarzabal and Pedri for Fabián, good company for Rodri. The music was the same. Argentina didn’t consider anything else necessary. They entered the last quarter, after the second hydration break, without having attempted a single shot. But with the inconvenience that another central defender, Cuti Romero, got injured.
Lamine managed to send a cross into the area, but Ferran headed the ball to Dibu. Pedri found a passage from the edge, advanced, and shot very softly, also to the goalkeeper. Cubarsí tried from afar like against Belgium and Dibu was able to keep the ball. Nico Williams also came on and put a cross to Laporte, who made an easy header for the goalkeeper.
Argentina’s response to the storm was to insist on the clash, as a way to reach zero to extra time. And there Dibu took them with an extraordinary save to a free shot from Lamine. They entered that borderline territory with one player less due to Enzo’s second yellow card. Their plan then was more grinding and less play. Spain kept to its own, with an electric Nico Williams. Spain won with the academy and resisted the street, for a second eternal star.
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