NEW YORK NEW JERSEY STADIUM — After Spain’s support staff had laid out the game plan, explained the tactics, told the players how they would best position themselves to make this Sunday one they’d never want to forget as opposed to one they’d never be able to, coach Luis de la Fuente addressed his team.
“Gentlemen, we have an appointment with history,” the 65-year-old manager told his players before extra time began. “We want to be there first, and then in the extra time, I just said, ‘Look, we are doing a great job. The match is controlled, but this is a final, and we are up against Argentina. So, if we are not careful, we might concede a goal. And we kept our focus up until the last minute.’”
As a result, Spain is the World Cup champion.
(Photo by ANP via Getty Images)
For 120 minutes under the midday sun, La Roja were the better team. In some ways, they were the only team, holding Argentina — the 2022 winners — without an attempt at goal for all of regular time and extra time, and then scoring on their 20th shot, when Ferran Torres finally beat Albiceleste keeper Emiliano Martínez.
Yet heading into the additional half-hour following a scoreless tie, and with the possibility of penalties looming, the game was still anyone’s to win. And the other side still had Lionel Messi, the architect of Argentina’s late two-goal comeback victory over England in last week’s semis.
“The first idea was to keep Messi at bay, but also the other players,” de la Fuente said. “We wanted to keep them away from our goal.”
Did they ever.
But they still had to finish the job. They needed a hero to do it. On a team full of bigger names — teenage sensation Lamine Yamal, former Ballon d’Or winner Rodri — Torres stepped up and became immortal, joining 2010 icon Andrés Iniesta in Spanish lore as a World Cup-winning goalscorer.
“I didn’t think too much,” Torres said afterward. “I saw the ball coming to me, and I shot it with the power of all the Spanish people.”
“I’m so happy for him to have scored this goal,” de la Fuente added. “He will make it into history. He has already made history, and he deserves it.”
The breakout game many suspected Yamal might have in this final never materialized. The Barcelona ace, who turned 19 during the tournament, had a quiet World Cup, though he came close to scoring on a late free kick on Sunday, only for Martínez to snare it. No matter.
(Photo by Maddie Meyer – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
Yamal is still a world champion in his first appearance on soccer’s grandest stage. And while his efforts only resulted in one goal over La Roja’s eight games en route to glory, his contributions didn’t go unnoticed by his teammates.
“I would like to express my sincere gratitude for his play,” the coach said of Yamal. “This [World Cup] will help him to mature and be even better in the future. He’s really sacrificed for the greater good, and this is very important in our sport.”
So is winning — especially at this level. De la Fuente, who began his post-game press conference by thanking God for Spain’s triumph, never wavered from his belief that his players would come out on top.
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“Today, we were convinced that this was our final,” he said. “I think it was a very complete game. If it wasn’t for the keeper, maybe we would have had a larger margin, a larger win.”
He’ll take it. All of Spain will. It’s just the second World Cup title for the country despite its dominance of Europe at club level, though La Roja has been doing lots of celebrating since de la Fuente took charge in 2022. They’ve now claimed three titles since then, winning the UEFA Nations League in 2023 and the European Championship two years ago. Now they’ve capped it with the biggest prize of all.
“We’ve won everything, in all the categories, and we came to the conclusion [today],” de la Fuente said.
“Once we finished the game, one of the players who’s been here the longest, said, ‘Coach, now what else is there to win?’”
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