The lesson is not to jump to conclusions. A World Cup campaign which began with a goalless draw against Cape Verde ended with a second star on the badge for Spain, who summoned the spirt of 2010 in their approach to the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Spain won the 2010 World Cup final 1-0 by scoring in the second half of extra time to beat a ten-man Netherlands side that had taken chunks out of them all game, yet Spain’s superiority endured and showed through in the end.
Against 39-year-old Lionel Messi and Argentina on Sunday, were things so different? Enzo Fernandez was sent off for two bookable offences, and Spain’s role as protagonists rather than disrupters was rewarded when substitute Ferran Torres fired in from Nico Williams’s knocked-down header for the only goal of a fraught and cagey final. “Football won” was 2014 winner Toni Kroos’s punchy assessment.
It was Andres Iniesta who had ceremonially carried the trophy onto the pitch ahead of kick-off, and that proved a portent, Argentina clinging on throughout against a Spain team whose attacking instincts and commitment to wearing down the ever-tiring defending champions never looked likely to end in vain.
Rodri winning the golden ball should not whitewash Messi’s legacy across these five weeks. Right from the moment he rocked up on Argentina’s opening night and hit a hat-trick against Algeria, it could be argued that this had been Messi’s best World Cup, more impressive even than 2022 when he finally won the ultimate prize and was enrobed with a traditional Qatari bisht at the winner’s podium, a footballing deity officially anointed.
It felt fitting, therefore, that he should be the man to kick things off at his second, and surely last, World Cup final. Not fitting; wrongfooting, as it turned out. Kick-off was the diminutive No10’s only touch of the opening 15 minutes and did it get so much better for him as the afternoon unfurled? Messi ended the evening inconsolable, tears spilling, a runners-up medal round his neck his assaulting reality.
The Messi versus Lamine Yamal sell did not come to fruition, this a contest between sustained state of probing versus constant state of containment and devoid of individual stardom. It was the turgid extreme of the fraught final many had anticipated.
Spain thought they had scored even before Torres did. Williams, another lively substitute, converted only for a fantom foul by Mikel Merino on Nicolas Otamendi to see it ruled out. Match statistics had flashed up on the big screen in the first half of extra time, just before Spain forced their winner. Spain shots: 16. Argentina shots: zero. They were getting close.
There was no turning point in a game that did not have patterns and periods but just one permanent complexion. That said, Spain’s dominance was handed a favour for free when Enzo Fernandez picked up two bookings in 11 minutes — dissent, then a crude foul — and was shown his marching orders.
The rogue challenge on Pau Cubarsi was a moment of incomprehensible stupidity from a player who Spain’s biggest club had publicly distanced themselves from only a few weeks earlier. The ultimate ignominy. His reaction to the dismissal was to try to have Marc Cucurella sent off for covering his mouth while speaking. Cucurella, just as a point of detail, did get a move from Chelsea to Real Madrid this summer.
Fernandez’s red card was in keeping with Argentina’s conveyor-belt delivery service of fouls throughout the game. Not since the 2022 final had a team committed as many fouls in a World Cup game. The guilty party that day: them again.
This final was not so different from America’s last, in 1994, when Brazil prevailed over Italy on penalties after an uneventful, barren match. Roberto Baggio that day in Pasadena was the man who died standing. No missed penalty, but did Messi feel so different from Baggio here? Argentina’s era is over, while Messi’s hopes of elongating his own served a damning blow. He was nullified, totally. This Spain will do that. Even to him, as it turned out.
Until he went off for Martin Zubimendi, Rodri had been so efficient and effective in possession, turning through his Premier League rival Alexis Mac Allister with such simplicity yet mastery. Shirt tucked in as usual, he was doing things in his own exemplary, old-school way. How Argentina could have done with his metronomic capabilities.
Argentina were intent on making physicality their edge, a rather cowardly admission that they did not feel equipped to beat Luis de la Fuente’s side on the football front.
Their clearest chances came late on when chasing a game that had never truly felt like theirs to grasp. Indeed, the best performance down Argentina’s right wing was probably that of Madonna, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Nazario driving a pretend motor car during the much-dreaded half-time show, which caused a chasm between the first and second half of more than 27 minutes long. Esteemed culture critic Wayne Rooney exclaimed: “I thought it was crap” to BBC Sport.
And so was the final itself, almost. That is, until Torres’s moment of clarity cut through the MetLife bluster and cut dead the Argentine creed of delay and disruption. Spain are the first team ever to win the World Cup by conceding just one goal along the way, all the more impressive given they did so across eight games, the first-ever winners of this new extended format. Yet again, never in danger, never in doubt.
So having not jumped to conclusions, time to conclude. They deserve to be world champions.
