Spain Won't Fall Behind. Argentina Can't Be Put Away. Something Has to Give.
Spain has not trailed for a single minute of the knockout stage; Argentina has trailed more than any Finalist since 1966, only to keep escaping late.
The World Cup Final will finally arrive this Sunday, and with it comes a matchup between the two highest-rated national teams in the soccer world (as well as two of the winningest teams in tournament history): Argentina and Spain, the defending world champs — led by the GOAT, Lionel Messi — against the deep European powerhouse trying to complete the most dominant defensive run in World Cup history.
But for all they have in common, the two finalists have taken almost perfectly opposite paths through the knockout stage. For Spain, the road to the Final has been an exercise in stifling control: Four wins, eight goals scored and just one goal conceded. Meanwhile, Argentina has repeatedly lived on the edge, falling behind and/or otherwise needing stoppage-time or extra-time winners to secure its knockout victories.
We can see this in each team’s share of time spent in different game states. Spain has spent 38.9 percent of its knockout minutes leading and another 61.1 percent tied, which — if you’re doing the math at home — happens to leave zero percent left over for them to have trailed. By contrast, Argentina has spent only 28.6 percent of their minutes leading, 48.7 percent tied and 22.6 percent trailing — including 70.8 of the time against Egypt in the Round of 16 and 31.2 percent of the time against England in Wednesday’s semifinal.
Going back to the 1966 World Cup, Spain is one of 14 Finalists who played multiple knockout-round games in the lead-up to the Final itself while never trailing; among those, they rank eighth-best in the share of time they had the lead. Flip it around, and Argentina has the 10th-lowest share of time leading in the pre-Final knockouts for any Finalist — and has spent the most time trailing of any Finalist, beating out Italy’s 21 percent share of minutes spent behind on the scoreboard in the lead-up to the 1994 Final.
In addition to never trailing, Spain has spent 16 percent of its knockout minutes ahead by multiple goals; Argentina has spent nearly 23 percent of its run behind and never led by more than 1 goal at any point aside from a few moments at the end of the Switzerland game.1
Across all their knockout matches, Spain has led by an average of 0.56 goals at any given minute, and in concert with their 60 percent possession share in the knockouts and near-total lack of dangerous chances conceded, they have dictated much of how their tournament has played out thus far.
Contrast that, again, with the absolute roller-coaster ride Argentina has been on in these knockout games. Against Cape Verde and Switzerland — two theoretically overmatched opponents — they blew second-half leads and required extra time to eventually advance. And those were the good outings for La Albiceleste. Against both Egypt and England, Argentina fell behind in each contest — trailing past the 80-minute mark before notching their equalizing goals, and needing stoppage-time scores to complete the comebacks:
So now, we have a real study in contrasts — and a huge question-mark in terms of how things will play out on the sport’s grandest stage.
With Spain on Sunday, you kind of know what you’re going to get: They will dominate possession — or at least try to — and in the process attempt to stifle Argentina’s ability to generate sustained pressure, just as they have against everyone else. (You can be sure coach Luis de la Fuente’s squad won’t fall prey to England’s failed “park-the-bus” strategy from the semis.) Not only has Spain made it this far without trailing; they’ve barely permitted opponents to create the conditions under which trailing becomes possible.
Argentina is harder to forecast. Messi and company have actually possessed the ball even more than Spain during the knockout stage, 62.8 percent to 60.0 percent, and they have scored the most goals of any team in the tournament — nearly a goal per game more than Spain. (Impressive, even granting that those stats are owed at least in part to the tactics one must employ while trailing.) Ten different Argentine players have contributed a goal or assist during the knockout phase, which helps explain why they are so difficult to keep buried.
At the same time, the Argentine defense has been far more porous. They’ve conceded six times in four knockout games, spent nearly a quarter of their minutes behind and have repeatedly required late intervention from Messi, Enzo Fernández, Lautaro Martínez and the rest of their attackers to bail them out of bad situations late. Can they really rely on this formula every game — particularly against a defense like Spain’s? It seems unlikely, though Messi has specialized in the impossible his entire career.
If Argentina does pull it off, it would complete the shakiest pre-Final knockout run by any eventual champion since at least 1966. Spain, meanwhile, is trying to finish off a far more familiar championship script: Seven of the 11 previous teams to reach the Final without trailing in the knockouts2 went on to win the championship. That’s no guarantee on Sunday, of course. But it does illustrate the contrast in action — while Argentina has repeatedly had to rescue itself from games that got out of control, Spain never lets that happen in the first place. And in the title game, one of those two identities will finally break.
Filed under: Soccer
This is admittedly a bit of a limitation in our data; their share of time leading by 2 shows up as 0% in the chart because the full extent of stoppage-time at the end of each period is not available in the box score, so it was filled in when known events (goals, bookings) happen in stoppage time — otherwise, regulation-period lengths were used.
Minimum three previous knockout games.