Spain, the Best Team (Maybe Ever?), Won One of the Best World Cups Ever... Eventually
La Roja dominated Argentina from start to finish, but needed extra time to complete a record-breaking championship run.
The World Cup Final is complete — Spain are your champions for 2026, capping off one of the best World Cups ever with one of the best performances we’ve ever seen at the tournament.
In the biggest-picture sense, the win was historic on many levels. Spain won or drew their 38th consecutive match at the Final, breaking a tie with Italy from 2018-2021 for the longest unbeaten streak in the history of international men’s soccer, a run of unprecedented dominance stretching back to March 26, 2024:
Spain also ended the 2026 tournament with just a single goal conceded in eight matches, setting a new record for the fewest allowed by a champion in World Cup history:
And, of course, Spain ended the World Cup with the highest Elo rating of any champion in the history of the tournament:
The truth is, Sunday’s winner was going to be among the GOAT World Cup winners on paper regardless of whether Spain or Argentina prevailed. But between the two teams on the pitch today, the numbers and game flow told the entire story — Spain was in complete command nearly the entire game, dominating every measure of possession, dangerous chances created and general territorial control there is:
This was true to their form throughout the World Cup, where Spain’s stifling possession and defense led them to never trail all tournament.
But true to their form, Argentina was always threatening, no matter how much they were outplayed, because of their history of escaping seemingly insurmountable jams with late-match heroics. Even as they were dominated all game long, La Albiceleste hung around and didn’t concede the eventual winning goal until Ferran Torres broke through for Spain in the 106th minute. Even to the very end of stoppage time in the second half of extra time, it was not clear that Argentina was out of the championship. If not for a few errant chances — some of their only scoring chances of the entire match — Argentina could have forced the dreaded penalty shootout.
During the game, I mused on the differences between the competing flavors of “football” at this American World Cup Final:
In some ways, it seems absurd that a team outplayed so significantly as Argentina could still potentially win by the end of soccer’s “Super Bowl” on Sunday. In the American version of football, such a team would have been run off the field in regulation.
But gridiron football is not association football. Nor does it have to be — and more Americans are learning to appreciate soccer on its own terms rather than judging it by the logic of our own games. Sunday even showed why: Argentina’s survival kept the drama alive far longer than the balance of play suggested it should have. And yet, in the end, the best team still found a way to win, as it so often does in the World Cup.
Filed under: Soccer
Great end to the tournament. Argentine wound up playing the villains of the World Cup, and it was partly deserved. Spain, but for atrocious finishing, dominated the two other top three sides in the world.