Spain win a second star after finally beating a black hole of an Argentina team in the World Cup final.
Lionel Messi may not have got the ending that he and much of the world may have wanted but few can say the winners weren’t the right champions for the World Cup final.
Spain have been the best team and they were duly the only side actually playing to win this otherwise dismal occasion across more than 120 minutes.
It had an argument to be the worst final of all – which subsequently descended into chaos after Leandro Paredes’ antics in the final whistle – until Ferran Torres rose above it all to send the ball high into the Argentina net.
His superbly-taken 106th minute goal ensures he is now part of World Cup lore alongside Andres Iniesta.
Enzo Fernandez meanwhile enters infamy, as he becomes the sixth player to be sent off in the final. Three of them are Argentine and it really could have been more here, with Paredes given his punishment after the final whistle.
The two others came in 1990 and this game had so many echoes of that, right down to a tired and stale side with a fading legend ultimately falling late on.
Argentina became the first finalists to complete the 90 minutes without recording a shot. Defeat was fully deserved.
Messi, in probably his last World Cup game, could barely get a touch until the climax. Then again, Lamine Yamal didn’t do much either, outside one fine free-kick towards the end.
Some of that was admittedly down to aggressive Argentine double-making, as the 23rd final almost immediately entered a defined and distinctive pattern.
Spain had all of the ball, and Argentina did almost nothing except defend deep.
The beaten finalists were only enlivened by Torres’s goal, which at last saw Messi come alive.
It was all too brief, in too limited time.
Argentina might have tried to do more… but they wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t.
It is probably the deposed champions who will provoke more debate and discussion from this game, but Spain do deserve immense credit.
That went beyond actually trying to play in this final, and rising above this World Cup of individual stars by actually playing as a team.
Luis de la Fuente was proactive himself, again turning a big game with his subs, and there was a symbolism in another squad player – the impact attacker Torres. This is a proper collective, a team that play with an idea.
That ensured they actually had multiple chances to win this before the end.
It looked like it might be one of those days – on the worst day of all – as Mikel Merino missed a header right in front of goal and Nico Williams had a goal controversially disallowed.
It just wasn’t happening.
And from that, there would have been almost deliciously grim football perverseness had Argentina managed it from there.
This was the most expensive match of all time after the highest-grossing World Cup, too, with the financial obsession reflected in the number of celebrities Fifa were proudly publicising as attending. There was even the anti-football farce of a half-time show, as the notional global safeguards of the game usher in another new precedent that football’s actual community have long been resisting.
That display – especially some real mood-killing songs – was still somehow worse than a turgid first half, and raised quite a prospect.
All of these celebrities there, Fifa all too willing to cut to them on the big screen, and here they were grimly sitting through an anti-football team turgidly grinding it out to a potential penalty shoot-out win. Maybe it’s what Fifa deserved, too, after Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump were booed.
That’s football.
Except, this wasn’t really football. It would have been too bad, a level beyond.
Argentina have surely put in the most miserable display ever seen in this fixture, and that’s including teams who lost 4-2 and 5-2.
They at least tried to play.
And sure, maybe some allowances can be made. Argentina were probably exhausted after Wednesday. This trend continues of the first semi-finalist winning the final, with the only team breaking it in modern history the Spanish themselves in 2010.
They’re probably exactly the wrong team you want to play in those circumstances. They just keep the ball away from you until you become exhausted.
It’s almost a matter of maths, Spain creating all of the angles and shutting off most of the openings until eventually there’s a break.
Except, they were also in their own race against time.
But this was worse than just defending from Argentina. There was a clear intimidation to their play, a gamesmanship perhaps taken to inevitable extremes, and aided by a permissive referee.
He let a lot go, until he eventually had no choice but to send off Fernandez.
It was all so different to the last World Cup final, right up to the feeling around Argentina and Messi. He doesn’t go ahead of Diego Maradona to win a second, but instead loses a second final out of three.
Surely no one can think that’s a shame here. Not after that and what his teammates did.
And, after that, there is potentially new reflection for England too, as they now become the only country to have won the World Cup only once.
How did they lose to this team, given Spain finally exposed them? It only emphasises the tactics were wrong in that semi-final.
It had long been felt that Argentina had so many flaws they would eventually lose to the first elite team they played and this was that – even if it took much longer than anticipated.
Of course, the reflection for England should actually be far deeper.
It should really be how you evolve an idea like in the way Spain do.
It doesn’t even need to be the same, since no one can play this to the depth Spain can and not everyone would even want to.
But merely having that football lesson is an amplification of all their talents, ensuring they have been by some distance the best team.
And now, very deservedly, world champions for the second time.
Not just a victory on the greatest stage of all, but a lesson, and a moral victory.
