Latest Sports Stories

Football News

The World Cup final is a classic clash of the process team against a side riding an emotional urge to fulfil Messi’s destinyIn the 37 minutes between England going ahead against Argentina and falling behind, they had 12% possession. It’s fair to assume that in the World Cup final Spain will provide a rather different challenge. They do not suffer the Mafeking tendency of the English, seeking to re-enact some famous siege every time they take the lead. The finalists have averaged 64% possession so far in the tournament. Spain could hardly be more different to England: their way is not of panic but of process.There is a clearly defined Spanish style, as there has been since Vicente del Bosque replaced Luis Aragonés as Spain manager in 2008, and arguably before. In that, perhaps, there is hope for England. Spain once were even greater underachievers but Aragonés inspired the revolution against the furia roja orthodoxy. The result has been three Euros and a World Cup in the past two decades, with perhaps another to come on Sunday.The patience and emphasis on ball retention can at times become predictable – no system or style is ever without flaw – but Luis de la Fuente has reinvigorated the juego de posición model. A view of the alternative in Atlanta on Wednesday, a team pathologically unable even to attempt to retain possession, is instructive of how valuable can be the capacity not to lose the ball.It helps perhaps that De la Fuente is of the system. He is not a club coach dabbling in the international game, but a federation man who has known many of his players since they were in the national youth teams. This has been a bad tournament for big names signed up by wealthy nations – not just Thomas Tuchel, but Carlo Ancelotti, Julian Nagelsmann and Mauricio Pochettino. It’s no coincidence that Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni, like De la Fuente, also took the senior job after being under- 21 coach. He knows the players, knows the style, knows the system, knows the mentality.Joachim Löw, similarly, led Germany to the 2014 World Cup after coming through the federation. England’s improvement in international form – four semi-finals in five tournaments since 2018, after four in total before then – came after a revolution guided by Sir Gareth Southgate, who had worked with the FA in overhauling the academy system and the England DNA project before becoming under-21 coach.It increasingly feels that international football, at the highest level, is about systems (which may be an argument for Lee Carsley, who has led England Under-21s to two European Championship successes, to have been given the senior job).Under Scaloni, there has been a self-conscious effort to restore a more traditional Argentinian game, based less on physicality (in the sense of longer passes, bigger forwards, more running; obviously this side is quite prepared to be physical when it comes to regaining possession, as best embodied by Giuliano Simeone trying to wrestle Marc Guéhi off the ball with his head) and more on short passing.That’s why their analyst Matías Manna cites the Boca Juniors midfielder Leandro Paredes as the key presence in this side. “He wins the ball a lot from the front and knows how to defend behind him,” he has said.“If a team is built around passing, it’s important to have a holder like Paredes who interacts well with the inside players and the No 10. He’s the Argentinian who best finds Messi between the lines. You can’t analyse the game individually. The game is in the relationships between players.”Manna is obsessed by the idea that everything should be integrated, that the formation is less important than the tactical and emotional bonds between players. Under Scaloni, Argentina’s greatest strength is their togetherness, the sense of common purpose, the need to endow Lionel Messi with a second World Cup to invert the old argument and give him one more star than Diego Maradona.Where Spain have abandoned the notion of la furia, Argentina have embraced it. It’s obviously not as simple as just staying in the game until Messi can do something brilliant, but equally his capacity to turn matches through ability and force of will is in an enormous asset. The Messi-inspired late surge has been the defining feature of Argentina in the knockout stage.It seems likely that Argentina will do what they did against England and set up not in the 4-4-2 of earlier in the tournament but in a 4-5-1 with Messi as a loose centre-forward and Julián Alvárez on the left. Whether Simeone is used again as an irritant on the right – his clash with Marc Cucurella could be spectacularly antagonistic – or whether Rodrigo De Paul, Messi’s more familiar bodyguard, is deployed is perhaps the biggest decision Argentina have to make.The key, though, will be to try to unsettle the Spain midfield, to prevent them settling into their rhythm, which may mean Alexis Mac Allister or Enzo Fernández effectively performing a man-to-man job on Rodri, the metronome in the Spain midfield.Cape Verde and Egypt had both exposed Argentina’s vulnerability to pace. England, bafflingly, did not try to exploit it and it’s not something that Spain can obviously do. Their great asset at the last Euros was combining suffocating possession with directness they had in wide forward areas. But injury has restricted them in this tournament.On the left Nico Williams, who was such a force at the Euros, has been restricted to substitute appearances and Álex Baena looks exactly what he is: a central creator without great natural pace filling in on the flank. On the right Lamine Yamal, who came into the tournament carrying a hamstring problem, has been looking fitter game by game, but has not yet been at his very best.There is a sense in which the final is a classic clash of the process team with a side riding an emotional wave. Passion always brings with it a risk: it could boil over to hand the cool rationalists an easy win. Should Spain take the lead, it’s easy to imagine them frustrating Argentina, denying them the ball and picking them off on the counter.But Argentina are a more self-aware side than, say, Brazil in 2014, better able to direct their drive and the longer the game goes on without a goal, the likelier Argentina fulfilling Messi’s manifest destiny becomes.

Football News

A history of racism and ongoing footballing rivalries have made the choice of which team to get behind in Sunday’s final a charged topicThe Brazilian journalist and columnist Julia Duailibi usually writes about politics in her weekly column for the leading Brazilian newspaper O Globo, but last Thursday she took a different tack, writing instead about why she would not be supporting neighbouring Argentina in the World Cup final.“I have always been an admirer of the hermanos [as Brazilians affectionately call Argentinians] and would have loved to cheer on a fellow South American team,” she wrote on the morning after Argentina’s dramatic semi-final victory over England. “But I admit that the racist scenes involving a minority of the fans, and the silence of the majority on the pitch, turned my stomach.”Her stand is just one example of a common sentiment: across Latin America, many people have declared their support for Spain in Sunday’s final. Racism by some Argentinian fans has been cited as one reason, but not the only one.“In the past, people were more likely to support a Latin American team against a European one, but that has changed quite a lot in recent years,” said Nicolás Cabrera, an Argentinian sociologist and anthropologist who has devoted his academic career to studying football supporters across Latin America.Previously, he said, that approach had largely been confined to Argentina’s traditional local rivals – above all Brazil, but also Uruguay and Chile – but has more recently extended to some Mexicans, Colombians and Ecuadorians.“Rifts began to appear for several reasons,” said Cabrera, who has lived in Rio de Janeiro for the past 10 years, where he is a university lecturer and researcher.First, there is the fact that Argentina have by far been Latin America’s most successful national team in recent years, reaching three of the past four World Cup finals and winning at least one of them.Over the same period, their neighbours have suffered much earlier exits This includes Brazil, who have not reached the World Cup final since winning their record fifth title in 2002.Argentina also have the star who has been lifting trophies and winning hearts around the world for two decades: Lionel Messi, who, even at 39, has been one of this World Cup’s standout players.Cabrera also sees the growing rivalry as a consequence of the increasing number of matches between clubs – the Copa Libertadores continental tournament featured about 20 teams until the 1990s; today, including the preliminary rounds, nearly 50 compete. “As our teams play each other more often, fans start winding each other up,” he said.But Cabrera added that social media have also contributed: “Hate speech, racism, xenophobia and discrimination began to circulate in ways that had previously been more marginal and less visible.”It is difficult for there to be a match between clubs from Argentina and Brazil without at least one video emerging of an Argentina supporter making monkey gestures at Brazilians. But this is far from new: in 1920, on the eve of a friendly between the two sides, an Argentinian newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Brazilian players as monkeys.In recent months, several tourists from Argentina have been arrested in Brazil for “racial insult”, a crime under Brazilian law. While celebrating his country’s victory over England, an Argentinian tourist was filmed in the Brazilian north-eastern state of Bahia making monkey gestures at a Black Brazilian. He was not arrested and has reportedly already returned to Argentina.What had previously been confined to the streets and the stands at Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana matches spilled over into the World Cup – including the incidents involving US influencer IShowSpeed in Argentina’s game against Cape Verde. That was what prompted Duailibi to take a break from politics to write about Argentina.“I know Brazil is not a model in this respect either, that we still have a long way to go when it comes to racism, but at least our legal framework is far more effective than theirs,” she said. Argentina has no law that explicitly criminalises racism.The controversies are not confined to Brazil or the terraces. While celebrating their 2024 Copa América title, Argentina players chanted racist and homophobic songs about members of the France squad they had defeated in the 2022 World Cup final. During the current World Cup, a well-known Argentinian journalist said on a television programme that he hated Mexicans “with all his soul”. Days earlier, he had also claimed that, during a match between Mexico and Ecuador, the Ecuadorians played in fear after supposedly being “threatened with death” by a Mexican drug cartel. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, described the remarks as “outrageous”.While condemning the racist incidents involving some Argentinians, Fábio Luís Barbosa dos Santos, a Brazilian historian specialising in Latin America, said that they will not stop him from supporting the neighbouring country in the final.“If the issue is racism, then you couldn’t support Spain either,” he said, recalling not only Spain’s colonial past, during which it profited from the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, but also the countless recent cases of racist abuse directed at the Brazilian footballer Vinícius Júnior by La Liga supporters in his appearances for Real Madrid.Santos said he would be supporting Argentina “because we are countries bound together by our colonial past, by dictatorships and now by the far right”, noting that while Argentina has President Javier Milei, Brazil until recently had Jair Bolsonaro in the equivalent position. “Their misfortunes are ours too, as their joys should be,” he added.He is far from the only Brazilian supporting Argentina in the final.The ride-hailing driver João Felipe Jr, 32, will travel 270 miles from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo to watch the match at a bar founded by Argentinians that went viral for welcoming dozens of Brazilians who have also chosen to support the neighbouring country.“There was a Brazil v Argentina match at the Maracanã three years ago that I attended with the Argentina supporters,” said Felipe Jr, who dismissed as “nonsense” the flood of memes and conspiracy theories on social media claiming that Argentina had been favoured by Fifa.“They deserve to be in the final, above all because of what Messi is doing. For me, it has everything to do with him. When he retires, I’ll stop supporting Argentina,” he said.

Football News

The Arsenal midfielder talks about how Luis de la Fuente has created a team built on respect and how they plan to beat Argentina in the World Cup finalThe night before the biggest day of their lives, the Spain players who were about to win the 2010 World Cup gathered in the Da Vinci Hotel in Sandton, just north of Johannesburg, drank hot chocolate, ate chocolate croissants and talked. The night before the biggest day of their lives, the Spain players seeking to emulate them 16 years later will gather in the MC Montclair in New Jersey and talk too, but there won’t be any chocolate this time. Some rituals are not to be repeated.“I think the nutritionists killed that one for us!” Mikel Merino says, hopping off the bus, freshly tuned up for the final, and heading into a tactics room at the Melanie Lane training ground, where Spain’s penultimate day of preparation is about to begin. “We used to do the Cola Cao and cakes in the under-19s and under-21s, copying the seniors, but not any more. Everyone has their own routine, but the main thing is to normalise it all: just another game, doing something we know how to do, that we’ve done since we were five years old and that we love. Treat it like something to be enjoyed, another day in our lives.”Some day. Some year too. “Spectacular,” Merino calls it. “Just the other day we were talking about this; if you had given me the chance, I would have signed up for this: going through the bad moments to have a year like this is incredible. The experiences I’ve been through, that my family have.” A Premier League title, a Champions League final, the birth of his first child and a World Cup final. And the injury that threatened it all. “I’m living every minute with an incredible joy,” he says. “Think where I was a few months ago and look where I am now. I appreciate this all the more.”The Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente, told Merino he would wait but the stress fracture in his foot defied easy analysis at first. “When they told me about my injury I didn’t think I would be at the World Cup,” the 30-year-old admits. Merino was operated on at the end of January, which actually came as relief because it meant that at least there was clarity, at least they were doing something. He spent two months on crutches. And then he went to work: hard.There were days he spent alone, others where he had help from his wife, lifting and carrying, which he said was the wrong way round: she was pregnant, but showed a strength without which he wouldn’t have made it. He learned that he was strong too, stronger than even he had imagined. But still, he played just 28 minutes between January and the World Cup, flying off and leaving his newly born son, Marco, behind. “Just being here is a victory for me,” he says. “God willing we can win it.”That Spain still can, that they made it this far, owes much to him, more super than a supersub. Like Lautaro Martínez, on the opposite side in the final, Merino has been a saviour from the bench. “Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine this,” he says, and yet he sort of did: this is what he prepares for, what he does. He doesn’t just sit there and he certainly doesn’t sulk; he studies.At Euro 2024, on as a substitute against Germany in Stuttgart, Merino scored the 119th-minute goal that took Spain into the semi-finals. Here, he scored the 91st-minute goal against Portugal that took Spain into the quarter-finals. There was only one problem: his wife and son weren’t there in Dallas. So four days later in Los Angeles, when they were, he went and did it again against Belgium. The clock had shown 85min 32sec when he came on; it said 87:27 when he scored the winner. He had just two touches: almost as significant as the strike itself was the alertness to set the ball rolling in the first place.All three goals were celebrated the same way, famous now. Merino circled the corner flag like his father, Ángel Miguel, had done when he scored late for Osasuna in the same Stuttgart stadium 33 years earlier. Win the World Cup and he can definitively say he was the better player, surely? “My mum won’t buy that one, not even with a World Cup,” he says, laughing. “I’m proud to follow in my dad’s footsteps, to have learnt all I’ve learnt from him, and the respect will always be there … even if I have the medal!“Coming from the bench isn’t the ideal plan for any player, but when you join a national team that’s as strong as I and Lautaro have, you value every opportunity and try to help your team if you come on or if you don’t. You focus on the present, embrace the situation, and think of yourself as the guy who can do it. I have complete belief in myself, my ability: every time I come on to the pitch I think I can have impact. In the final, I hope anyone [Spanish] is the hero. The trophy belongs to all of you, not just the 11 on the pitch.”He continues: “It’s important to have ego as a footballer. With all the criticism from outside, you need it. But you also need the humility. Players come to the national team because they’re important [at their clubs] and find a new reality. It is easy to talk about ‘family’ but when things don’t go well, when they’re difficult, is when you truly see that. It’s thanks to Luis and the squad he assembled, focused on being a good human first and then being a good footballer. That helps a lot when it comes to spending a lot of time together. We know each other very well, we know when to joke, when to be silent; that’s the strength of the group. That after 46, 47 days all together, we’re still …”There’s a pause and Merino laughs. Don’t get the wrong idea. “I wouldn’t say we were bursting to spend another two months together,” he says, cracking up. “Thank God, we’re coming to an end now, but, yes, we’re a very strong group. That’s why we’re here.” There may be no hot chocolate and no croissants any more but some meet round the PlayStation, others play Mario Kart or chess, Dani Olmo and Unai Simón battling on the bus to games. Merino is old school, more about the sobremesa: long conversations after eating, no hurry to leave the table, “chatting about life, our kids, the future, holidays”.“I think a couple they’re planning to go away together [after the World Cup],” he says. “Which is … impressive … after all this time. I don’t expect to see anyone!”That collectiveness has deep roots, built on respect and over a long time. After the semi-final, De la Fuente said there was a special embrace with some, a moment’s nostalgia allowed to creep in: look what we did. His first title was the European Under-19s in 2015, 11 years ago now. In the middle of the Spain midfield that day were Merino and Rodri. Simón was on the bench. Ten of the current squad have played under De la Fuente at junior level.“I was talking to the coach about that the other day because it was the anniversary of that tournament,” Merino says. “We were saying ‘how we’ve changed’ But the essence is the same: the essence of the coach, of the players that came through. That’s the strength of the group. There are more grey hairs, more wrinkles, more worries, but the humility and commitment remains.“Luis has had [many of] us at under-17, under-19, under-21. That’s so important. Not just for him, who knows each and every one of us and knows what we can give, which is a guarantee for a coach. But for the players too: you’ve experienced everything with him, good and bad, and you don’t have to give him anything new, you know? He knows what you can give: you don’t need to pull anything out of the hat. He takes you because he knows you as a person and a player. The group knows he has total faith in them and he knows the group will give our lives for him.”Which is why when Spain lost in Scotland at the start of De la Fuente’s tenure, which from the outside seemed destined to be brief, there was belief. Since then Spain have lost once in 37 games – and that was on penalties in the Nations League final. They have won a Nations League, a Euros and now they have a World Cup final too.“Often, it’s more a case of believing than something you actually see,” Merino says. “We have a very good group, a generation of players whose level is high. We knew there was potential there, we could see things happening. Even that night in Scotland, when many people gave us up for dead or thought it wasn’t going to go well with this generation, we trusted in what we were doing, we knew the group was spectacular. And, look, it’s paid off: we were proven right.”So to Spain versus Argentina. To Messi versus Lamine. And that photo. “It’s unbelievable,” Merino says. “The first time I saw it, I thought it was AI, that it wasn’t even real. It is funny how life works sometimes: it has these special situations that you think are scripted by someone but it is just the coincidence of life. It’s unbelievable that two of the best to have played the game – hopefully Lamine in the future will be one of those – share a picture like that. It’s old, from a couple of years ago now, so I think all the jokes have been done [in here]. But it’s incredible.“What can I say about Messi? Just see the way he’s playing, how good he is at 39. I don’t know if this will be his last game, his last final. But it’s an incredible challenge to play against him. It will be an intense game, which it has to be: it’s a World Cup final. There will be contact, intense duels, but that’s why you have a referee: to control that. We have to ensure the ball moves fast. The less time it spends with each of us, the less chance they have of making fouls.”And then play, like it was any other day, like Spain always did. “I remember how it felt to watch that [2010] generation make history,” Merino says. “You think about that. You think about being a kid back then, watching players who were idols for me and my teammates. You think about how you dreamed of living that one day, how watching them motivated you. And then you think that you’re the ones representing your country now, you’re the ones this new generation of kids are watching, and it’s something magical.”

Football News

The boy in the baby bath has unbelievably become the successor to Messi at Barcelona and now, maybe, on the world stage too“Maybe Lionel Messi has picked up lots of babies, maybe it’s chance, but for those of us who have faith, who believe in something beyond, ‘chance’ is God’s pseudonym when he doesn’t want to sign his name,” Luis de la Fuente says. “In life, everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it’s true that the circle isn’t closed, but in my view there’s something else, something … I don’t know, mystical, spiritual.”Contemplate the scene, gaze upon the image of this World Cup, and you may be inclined to agree with Spain’s coach, to reach out and touch faith. How else to comprehend this? You will have seen the picture and will certainly see it again, and still it won’t make sense.The man who took it, the photographer Joan Monfort, says he didn’t believe in destiny before but does now. In it, Messi, the greatest footballer of all time, bathes an unknown baby with a cherubic smile. The child, chosen at random and surrounded by bubbles, is Lamine Yamal. The footballer De la Fuente says was “touched by God’s wand” was baptised by him too.On Sunday they face each other in the World Cup final.The photograph was taken around Christmas 2007. Sport newspaper was putting together a charity calendar on behalf of Barcelona and Unicef, a studio set up in the away dressing room at the Camp Nou. Each player had a month and appeared with a child. Ronaldinho, the star, was July. Messi was January. Lamine Yamal was four months old. His mum, Sheila, had put him into a draw to take part. Monfort got the idea the night before when bathing his daughter, taking a plastic tub and a rubber duck with him. Although the baby was tiny and Messi was timid, with Sheila’s help he got a shot he was happy with.And then, well, everyone forgot about it. Monfort left it in a drawer, another photo among thousands, no idea of a significance it didn’t yet have. The image was lost and then it was found. During Euro 2024 Lamine Yamal’s father, Mounir, posted it on social media, with the tag “the beginning of two legends”.Wait, what? How had this happened? How had that baby, chosen by chance, become Lamine Yamal? How, in fact, had Messi, a shy 19-year-old, become Messi? Of all the people in all the world how had they ended up together? How had no one seen this sooner? How on earth, why on earth, had Mounir not shared it before? Where did he suddenly find it? How had Lamine Yamal not known? When Monfort was introduced to him a while later, Lamine Yamal said he didn’t remember it. Well of course not, he was four months old.“What if it’s not actually Lamine?” Monfort had worried at the time, suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Which was understandable: there was no way this could be real. Stop for a moment and it messes with your mind. Mounir’s timing, it turned out, was perfect. Four days later Lamine Yamal scored that goal against France which took Spain to the Euro 2024 final and announced his arrival. It’s like the creation, Monfort reckoned, although one day in Rocafonda, where Lamine Yamal grew up, Mounir later joked with him that maybe things were the other way round, maybe it was Lamine giving Messi life.Unicef too posted that, yes, this was real. It was July 2026, and still it felt the need. Then on Wednesday when Argentina beat England, it got even more absurd: this was the first portrait of the poster stars of the biggest sporting event on the planet, and Monfort’s phone rang off the hook again.Not long ago Lamine Yamal was shown the photo. “God willing, I can face him in the final.” It still felt unlikely but if God had willed it this far, why stop now? So much had happened; some things had needed to not happen too: Spain and Argentina were supposed to play the Finalissima in March. How much better that they play here instead. Lamine Yamal smiled as he looked at the picture. “I’ve grown a little bit … and so has Leo,” he said.They had done so in public, under pressure, the weight of expectation. The next time Lamine Yamal appeared in a photo with Messi it was at Barcelona’s training ground. He was still small, barely 11 or 12; and by then Messi was, well, Messi. Although this was a fan meeting the planet’s best footballer, Lamine Yamal was no longer just a kid from Catalonia who had won a draw. Spotted playing for CF La Torreta in Mataro, he had joined La Masia. He recalls the first time he felt something like fame, exposure coming one day when he was down the park, aged 13 and already that kid from Barcelona.Messi knows that well, and it is not all they share. He had come from Argentina to Catalonia aged 12, famously “signed” on a napkin in the Pompeia tennis club. Lamine Yamal’s dad is from Morocco, his mum from Equatorial Guinea. Born in Catalonia, he signals Rocafonda’s 08304 postcode when he scores. It is a barrio where half of the population is at risk of poverty and about 20% are Moroccan, where he played on the gravel plaza of Joan XXIII. He could have represented Morocco, but had no doubt choosing Spain. Messi could have done too but chose Argentina, clinging to a country that took longer to truly embrace him than they might have and now couldn’t love him more.“Messi is the best,” Lamine Yamal has said. Listen to him talk about Messi and the first thing you may notice is how rarely he does, the answers a little evasive, almost formulaic. When he does talk there is respect, admiration, no doubt that the Argentinian is the finest footballer there has been, but not the excitement awoken by Neymar. In part that is strategic, seen perhaps in choosing the same sponsors – you can’t compete with Messi, can’t go up against him; but there is something simpler: Neymar was his idol, the player he identified with most.In Lamine Yamal’s character, his background, even in elements of his play, there’s more of Neymar than Messi: in the fun, the flash, the mischief, the glint in his eye. “Life is for living,” he says. He was seven when he first saw Neymar at the Camp Nou; yes, Messi was there, but Neymar was different, captivating. That was the football that came to him, a player who sees in himself the ideal between the street and the school. It was Neymar he watched on videos, Neymar he tried to emulate, Neymar he visited last summer in Brazil.No pressure, kid. “Pressure? No, Lamine Yamal said before the semi-final, inviting the world to his 19th birthday, enjoying the spotlight. Earlier this season he had celebrated his goals by performing his own coronation and if he has stopped now, if there have been moments when he has revealed the weight of responsibility, if he has mentioned his “internal abyss”, he has embraced the pressure, faced it, owned it. “Ego Yamal,” his headband reads. Above all, he has met it.“I would like to be everything that everyone wants me to be,” he said in the spring. “Thing is, people want you to score 100 goals at 16. I would like to as well.” He has more than 50. He is the youngest debutant at Barcelona, their youngest goalscorer too – a record that once belonged to Messi. “I want to follow my own path, that’s all; I have no intention of playing like him or anything like it. There is mutual respect; we both know I don’t want to be Messi,” he told CBS, noting: “I knew that [comparison] question was coming” – yet there are echoes there.If there’s a Lamine Yamal goal, and there is, one he keeps on scoring, it looks a lot like the goal that was Messi’s once. “I didn’t like comparing Messi to Maradona, but Messi didn’t make it easy; I don’t like comparing Lamine to Messi but Lamine doesn’t make it easy either,” Jorge Valdano, the former Argentina international, said. Xavi Hernández, who gave Lamine Yamal his Barcelona debut, didn’t want to either but also couldn’t help it. De la Fuente says: “There are geniuses, those who are touched by God’s wand and there are few of those: Lamine or Messi.” Lamine Yamal scored his first World Cup goal aged 18, wearing 19. Twenty years earlier, so had Messi: same age, same number.There is an evolution that awaits too. In a fascinating recent interview with El País, Lamine Yamal noted that Messi, like him, always finds himself marked by three men and that he will surely follow the Argentinian into a different part of the field. “The only place where three men can’t mark you is in the middle and I will end up there: they can’t defend me there,” he said.Messi turns 40 in June 2027 and Lamine Yamal insisted he would not be playing at that age. That lies a long way ahead, and who knows what he will think then. What lies behind has happened so fast, faster even than Messi. You can’t help taking a flight of fantasy, wondering where it will deliver him, and them, whether this era that opens before him will belong to him. Once Spaniards might have wondered what would have happened if Messi had chosen Spain, if on top of it all they had the planet’s best player; now they can’t help wondering if they may actually have him anyway. Even , if only out of respect, they have to wait until the day Messi departs. Until then, Messi has shown at this tournament, no one compares.Lamine Yamal, likened by De la Fuente to Michelangelo or Salvador Dalí, has played 151 games for Barcelona and won three league titles. This isn’t supposed to be possible. At his age Messi, who also wasn’t supposed to be possible, had played 34 and scored nine. Lamine Yamal has won a European Championship with his country, secured the day after he turned 17, a schoolboy sitting exams while leading Spain to glory. Messi took until he was 34 to win an international trophy with Argentina, but he hasn’t stopped since. The 2022 World Cup was supposed to be his last, a man on a mission, a cause, the greatest story ever told. But somehow here he is again, the tale taller all the time: this is his third World Cup final and he seeks another title, a fourth international trophy in a row, at an age when he might have walked away years ago.And Lamine Yamal stands before him, a winner already when he is still only starting out: a passing of the torch for Messi to put on hold, if only for a day. “There is a new generation of players that’s very good and has many years ahead,” Messi said. “If I had to choose one, it would be Lamine. Without doubt, he’s the best.” Lamine Yamal said: “If we meet on the pitch there will be mutual respect because for me he is the best in history.” For the first time and surely the last, on Sunday, in the most global city of all, they will. In the World. Cup. Final. Where to even start with the symbolism? Where to find an explanation for the impossible?Spain versus Argentina. European champions versus South American champions. Lionel Messi versus Lamine Yamal. The 19-year-old at his first World Cup, the age Messi was when they first met, versus the 39-year-old at his sixth and surely last. The teenager then who went on to mark a generation, now a father, against the teenager called to mark the next, his anointed one. The boy handed Messi’s No 10 like Messi was handed Maradona’s, the boy handed to him almost 20 years ago, unknown then, an icon now, the boy in the bath.

Football News

Spain’s streak started after a defeat in 2024 but Argentina are no slouches – they are on an unbeaten run of 14 matchesSpain look unstoppable. Their 2-0 victory over France meant that they have not lost a game in normal or extra time for 37 games, which Opta revealed has equalled the best such stretch by a European team. However, Spain did lose the final of the 2025 Nations League to Portugal on penalties.Their “unbeaten run” matches the efforts of Italy between October 2018 and September 2021, a streak which included Roberto Mancini’s side winning Euro 2020. Unlike Spain, Italy were truly unbeaten.No team from South America has ever gone as long without defeat. Brazil went 36 matches unbeaten between December 1993 and January 1996, winning a World Cup along the way, while Argentina equalled their great rivals from July 2019 to November 2022. The latter’s run might have been ended by a stunning loss to Saudi Arabia in Qatar, but recovering from that to become world champions was an emphatic response.For Spain to have reached this point is no surprise when you consider their history. They are responsible for six of the 11 instances of a European nation going unbeaten for at least 25 games. Five of these periods have occurred within the past 22 years, emphasising how dominant Spain have been for the last two decades.They can call upon players with even better records. Fabián Ruiz has represented his country 49 times without losing (shootouts notwithstanding). Despite the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder proving his elite ability in recent years, Ruiz has not played the most minutes in Spain’s current unbeaten stretch. He’s not even in the top five.The leading man has been Marc Cucurella, with Unai Simón, Aymeric Laporte, Lamine Yamal and Mikel Oyarzabal completing the quintet upon which Luis de la Fuente has leant most heavily.The Spain manager has used 62 players in the 37 matches, which highlights the depth of talent his country has produced. Or perhaps it suggests a degree of indecisiveness on De la Fuente’s part. Hardly: of the 15 players who have made at least 20 appearances in the unbeaten run, 10 started the World Cup semi-final, four came on as substitutes and Martín Zubimendi was an option on the bench.It was a 1-0 loss to Colombia at the London Stadium in March 2024 that drew the start line for Spain’s current unbeaten run. The streak inevitably includes victories over Europe’s lesser lights in tournament qualifiers, but also 11 matches against Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.Argentina are unbeaten for 14 matches and it’s worth noting they have won them all. They’ve also lost three times since Spain were last beaten, though. The weight of recent history remains firmly on the side of De la Fuente’s men.

Football News

Luis de la Fuente’s final-bound team have been fuelled by togetherness and a commitment to each other that goes back a long wayOn the way out of the dressing room in Arlington, Luis de la Fuente gathered his “family” and delivered one last message before the World Cup semi-final against France. He had long known what he was going to say, if not exactly how – it’s what he has been saying for 50 days and more. “I’ll tell them that this is a unique stage, the kind of moment that may never be repeated again, and that we have to be ourselves,” he had suggested 18 hours earlier; now that idea crystallised in a line. “We’re facing one of the best lineups in the world,” the Spain coach told them, “but we’re the best team in the world.”By the time they made their way back in again, a voice was heard above the shouts, another line to encapsulate it all, to define this. It belonged to Marc Cucurella and it said: “What a fucking recital!” A call came in to De la Fuente, King Felipe on the phone saying pretty much the same thing, if a little more politely. On went the music, Jamaican (Bam Bam) blasting out, pizza was passed around, and they bounced about. Some did, anyway. Some just sat there taking in what they had done. “It was written: we started in Atlanta and we end in New York,” Dani Olmo said, but a semi-final is not supposed to be like this.Certainly not against them. Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé, Michael Olise. Yeah, and? Another voice: “You ate him up!” And another: “Take him out your pocket!” “Pardon pardon,” Lamine Yamal posted. Three years in a row, three competitions, one result: in 2024 Spain had knocked France out of the Euros in the semi-final, in 2025 the same happened in the Nations League semi final, and now this, the World Cup. So maybe it is supposed to be like this; maybe everyone should have thought Spain were favourites like Spain did. But those other semi-finals were not like this; maybe no other semi-final has been.The stats say so. No semi-finallist has been reduced to as little as this since Sweden eight World Cups ago. And that, with apologies, was Sweden; this is France. It was not just about the result, it was about the way it was done. It’s not supposed to be so … easy? Not supposed to be played out to olés, French players beaten, chasing a ball they know they’re not going to be allowed to reach. They had already given up on a final that Spain would not allow them to reach either. On the touchline, Spain’s squad counted down, arms around each other. A thousand thoughts, sure, but no nerves, no tension.“The team is euphoric,” Rodri said. De la Fuente was asked about a line Luis Aragonés used to say about not celebrating until you have won something. He admires Aragonés, he said, how could he not, but he wasn’t having it. This was to be celebrated. “No, no,” he replied, “I’m not into these ‘literary’ or ‘journalistic’ phrases. I’m made of different stuff. What we have done is very hard, why would we not be happy? I value the journey, what we have done. Only one team can win the World Cup and whatever happens this is a success.”“It will be the game of our lives,” Rodri said, but maybe they had already played it, and it was a picture of who they are. France were a portrait too, a collection of players that didn’t know what to do, that had no response; Spain would not allow them one. Finalists four years ago and four years before, this generation was supposed to even better. They had scored more goals than anyone here, seemed unstoppable, yet they could not manage a shot on target until the final quarter against Spain. Their xG had gone from an average of 2.4 per game to 0.31, their lowest ever. They had allowed only 0.6xG against and Spain racked up 1.7. And that on a day when Spain’s game was about control more than creation.If this was about the stars, Lamine Yamal versus Mbappé, there was a clear winner again: that’s now 9-2 to the kid who just turned 19. But here comes the narrator’s voice: it was not about the stars. At a World Cup where much has been made of the big names turning up – Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Mbappé until he faced Spain – much of the discourse around Spain has been around when Lamine Yamal would turn up. Too much of the discourse has been around that. Because it suggests he hasn’t turned up, when he has, even if he hasn’t had his Big Night. And because this is a collective, a team. For all the spotlight, Lamine Yamal knows that too.Before the game, De la Fuente and Rodri had talked about Lamine Yamal remaining calm, not allowing the “anxiety” to take him, the urge to live up to the expectation. It was read as an attempt to protect a teenager, a psychological message about the pressure, the weight of responsibility, but it was tactical too. There are so many words to describe Spain’s performance against France, and many are superlatives, but one is disciplined. Lamine Yamal took fewer risks and rarely lost the ball: that was not timidity, it was part of the plan. And Spain executed it to perfection, aware of exactly what they had to do.Choose a player, and it’s there, all the way to the goalkeeper, Unai Simón, repeatedly out to meet Mbappé. Rodri, a player De la Fuente described as “made for our model”, won more duels than all France’s players put together and completed more passes than anyone else. Olmo had Juan Mata tweeting: “How he plays!” Fabián Ruiz has played for Spain 49 times and never lost. Pau Cubarsí is from a village so small it doesn’t have a football pitch but he may be the best centre-back at the World Cup, with the possible exception of Aymeric Laporte, who at the diaspora World Cup is one Frenchman who is going to the final.Cucurella has two assists and Pedro Porro two goals. Which may be what happens with attacking full-backs, only that’s twice as many goals as they have conceded. They have allowed fewer than 1.5 shots on target per game. Watch the Porro goal back and it all starts with Spain playing their way out from a tight corner, 100 metres away. Look at the heat map and Mikel Oyarzabal is a midfielder, all part of the plan. “Centre-backs don’t like having to come to there,” he said, offering an explanation of the mechanics. Sometimes his job, he says, is to “not get in the way”. The quiet man has five goals; no Spaniard has got more at a World Cup.If the start was slow, here they are, just where they always thought they would be, even if others didn’t. “It was planned to be in our best shape at the most important moment,” De la Fuente said. “We know France, how dangerous they are, but we also knew how to deactivate them. But in the end, it’s down to the players. However much you tell them something, it’s down to them to know how to find the spaces. Your pieces of paper and all the arrows aren’t worth much without them. Spanish players are the best precisely because of that interpretation of football. We started four years ago and we have been faithful to an idea, which is what brought us here.”There have been tweaks to that idea. Two years ago a virtue was made of Spain’s vertigo, that twist on tiki taka provided by two flying wingers, and now it is back to the control that defined them before. But there is a line of continuity, as well as an intense competitiveness, a commitment to the collective and to each other, going back a long time. De la Fuente’s tightest embraces were for those with whom he won the 2015 Under-19s Euros: “We said: ‘Back then could you ever have imagined being here?’”Maybe not in 2015, no, but he knew. The Spanish generation that lifted the World Cup in 2010 are held up as some untouchable image of perfection, a team you cannot possibly match; but this generation, European champions like them, are in the World Cup final too. And that 2010 team never had a performance like this. Never mind the “names”, De la Fuente kept telling people that Spain’s players were the best. He told them that too, all together, just before they went out and showed the world it was true.

Football News

Kylian Mbappé, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembélé blew teams away in the early rounds of the World Cup but France had no answers when faced with Spain’s tactical superiorityFor the last few weeks, France had seemed destined to reach their third straight World Cup final, but in the end they were overrun by a more tactically coherent Spain team in the semi-finals. Once France went behind to Mikel Oyarzabal’s penalty in the 22nd minute – the first time they had trailed in the tournament – Didier Deschamps’ side never looked like mounting a comeback. There would be no bolt from the blue from Kylian Mbappé, with the match instead plodding along to its logical conclusion. Where did it go wrong and what will come next?France’s all-star attack had been praised across the globe for the last six weeks. Having scored 13 goals in their first four matches, their frontline looked unstoppable. Against Spain, though, the forwards did not combine meaningfully with one another and their lack of clinical edge was laid bare.France were 2-0 down before they had a shot on target. Mbappé, the second top scorer in men’s World Cup history, failed to have a shot on target. As had been the case in the last two matches, Mbappé’s attacking impact was blunted by the need to drop deeper into midfield, and his first shot did not arrive until midway through the second half.Michael Olise, who was compared to Michel Platini for his playmaking performances in the group stage, lost the ball 20 times and struggled to find his bearings. Ousmane Dembélé did not trouble Unai Simón until the final minutes of the match. Of the starting quartet, the most significant impact on the match came from Bradley Barcola in his defensive contributions, with Lucas Digne unable to contain Lamine Yamal.France’s forwards, who had looked so at ease swapping positions and combining in the early stages of the competition, appeared increasingly isolated from each other as the knockout stages progressed. In locking down the middle third of the pitch, Spain succeeded in keeping the forwards distant from each other and cut off from the rest of the team.Adrien Rabiot was the only France player who repeatedly broke down the Spanish lines, but he was hamstrung by the yellow card he picked up in the 10th minute. Deschamps’ decision to take him off at half-time drastically decreased France’s chances of winning the midfield battle. Alongside the recently injured Aurélien Tchouaméni, who often found himself playing too far back to have any influence on the match, Manu Koné was unable to replicate his standout performance against Morocco.Deschamps made a some like-for-like switches but they had no impact on the momentum of the game. Desiré Doué and Rayan Cherki were confined to isolated pockets of space, and Théo Hernandez did not fare any better than Digne against Spanish attacks down the right wing.It would be difficult to argue France underestimated their opponents; Deschamps repeatedly singled out Spain as the favourites to win the tournament. Whether this was a sincere assessment or an attempt to reduce the pressure on his own team, his observation was backed up by recent experience.Counting the last Olympic final, France have now lost four consecutive matches to Spain, all in semi-finals or finals. Spain’s midfield supremacy ultimately made the difference in all of those matches. For the second time in three years, France were overrun by a midfield consisting of Rodri, Fabián Ruiz and Dani Olmo.Spain’s midfield superiority extends beyond matches between the senior sides. Whatever the lineup, whatever the age group, Spain have a clearly defined style that is replicated across all of their teams as part of an all-encompassing strategy. The same cannot be said of France’s various teams, which often seem to be built on a case-by-case basis in response to the individual talent available. Up against a deeply ingrained tactical setup, those individuals have been thwarted at every turn.Deschamps will end his 14-year tenure after Saturday’s third-place playoff in Miami. Finishing on the podium at three World Cups would not make for bad reading, and would surely place Deschamps as France’s best-ever head coach, but the lasting verdict will be that he could have achieved more given the talent at his disposal.The freedom Deschamps afforded his forwards in this tournament could also have been seen as a transition towards the Zinedine Zidane era. Zidane was famously non-interventionist when it came to coaching his front three at Real Madrid, and the depth of talent in the France squad will allow for a similar approach.In any case, Zidane’s appointment is likely to bring a degree of continuity to the national team. Like Deschamps, Zidane is above all a pragmatist on the sidelines. He is also an icon who commands respect in the dressing room – even more so than Deschamps. There are reasons to be optimistic. He will have a relatively young squad and will have goodwill from fans, players and decision-makers.The 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns were ultimately the culmination of Deschamps’ tactics of control and pragmatism, which took several tournaments to perfect before they became a winning formula. That approach had evidently run its course by Euro 2024 and he was right to switch things up. It was perhaps overly ambitious, though, to expect such a radical change to click straight away. France breezed into the latter stages, but they failed against Spain.This new-look France team may realise its full potential in four years’ time under Zidane. If that is the case, Deschamps’ legacy will be winning a World Cup and also laying the foundations for the new era.This is an article by Get French Football News

Football News

Brilliant buildup play has often withered but control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaosWhen the World Cup came to North America, with its final held in the planet’s biggest media market, the tournament was bound to fixate on stars.Fox’s coverage certainly enables that bias. Every game is billed like a boxing bout between two über-talented footballers rather than 22 players figuring things out across 90 minutes. One semi-final has been distilled down to MESSI v KANE (or MESSI v BELLINGHAM, depending on the broadcaster). The other leaned heavily on hope that Lamine Yamal’s hamstring would finally be at 100% after his April injury. MBAPPÉ v 600 PASSES PER GAME isn’t so snappy.Spain, despite entering as Europe’s reigning champions, have not garnered the same adoration in their run to a second World Cup final as their fellow semi-finalists. Many wondered how they could possibly contend with France. Online skeptics dished out a greater dishonor, accusing Luis de la Fuente’s side of being boring.There was no hero’s shot of Spain’s coach bellowing to the 70,176 fans in Dallas, asking whether they were not entertained. That isn’t the prize he and his charges are after. Any viewer is allowed to think Spain are dull compared to more breakneck alternatives at this World Cup, but as France learned on Tuesday, their approach is lethal when executed as planned.At Euro 2024, De la Fuente’s side operated in a similar style en route to their fourth continental title. They were a team determined to finish their opponents by making them suffer without the ball. Rodri cemented his Ballon d’Or case by anchoring the midfield and affording his teammates greater attacking involvement with expert shielding. Álvaro Morata made his critics eat crow by finishing the chances provided to him, finally the line-leader to actualize Spain’s potential. On either flank was one of the world’s trickiest young wingers: Nico Williams to his left, Lamine Yamal to his right.Most of those pieces returned for this World Cup. From the back, Unai Símon has left his box with some regularity as the team station themselves further upfield. Rodri has been in rare form this summer, a refreshing sight after his injury-riddled 2025-26 that followed the previous year’s anterior cruciate ligament tear. Fabián Ruiz has stepped up as a capable double-pivot partner, spraying balls up the flank if the lanes to Dani Olmo aren’t glowing.And yet, most of the focus has been on Spain’s relative inability to turn top-notch team play into goals. Lamine Yamal and Williams arrived fresh off of spring injuries; Williams has earned 98 minutes through seven matches and Lamine Yamal is not quite at his unplayable best. Morata missed out on this World Cup squad owing to poor form with Como. In sum, Spain’s brilliant buildup has too often withered upon entering the final third.System play like Spain’s looks far less glamorous without a commanding frontman. Like Queen without Freddie Mercury or U2 without Bono, even the best basslines and beats become background noise without someone commanding attention. A healthier Lamine Yamal might have been that kind of player, but in reality this has been a World Cup dominated by strikers and goalkeepers, not the inverted wingers who have come to dominate the Champions League and Premier League in recent years.Then again, Lamine Yamal did make a crucial impact on the game against France. Attackers know to look for overcommitted and unaware defenders making off-ground clearances, as Mathys Tel found in May. As Lucas Digne readied to side-volley a clearance, he created a window for Lamine Yamal to exploit without the ball. There’s no assist on Lamine Yamal’s ledger for drawing a penalty, but his was an act which created a 0.78-xG chance in a game of fine margins.From there, Spain’s control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaos. Aside from against Paraguay, a team playing with less talent on paper, France played over and through lesser-organized opposition. Their ruthlessness against those opponents branded them as tournament favorites despite a fairly plush path to the quarter-final. Morocco were supposed to give the test they needed but showed up in Foxborough looking dazed and out of ideas before the opening whistle.Spain were hardly so timid, having beaten France at the same stage of Euro 2024 and the 2025 Uefa Nations League. Few national teams have the synergy of Spain, with so many of their players having come up in the post-Guardiola era. This is the football they aspired to play. These are the games they dreamed of winning. And, thanks to incredible commitment to their defensive responsibilities, they did so while cutting off a previously goal-drunken France.Granted, the argument for De la Fuente’s pragmatism grows weaker if Spain don’t capitalize on the luck they created. If Lamine Yamal doesn’t draw that penalty, France wouldn’t be on their backfoot before half-time. If Olmo can’t thread that perfect ball into Pedro Porro’s stride while taking contact, there’s no two-goal cushion. The worst-case scenario played out in their draw against Cape Verde, yet De la Fuente stuck by his principles. After all, a team as good as Spain can break through more often than not if everybody is on the same page.Spain are designed to make opponents suffer if they aren’t at their best. It’s a model that can work against any team in international football. Even – and, given three semi-finals’ worth of evidence, especially – mighty France.

Football News

The full-back was supposed to be busy shackling France’s vaunted front line but found time to score the killer goal at the other end“Let me loose in a prison and I’ll end up owning the place,” Pedro Porro once said. Let him loose in the penalty area and that will belong to him too. The whole world might: to him and the entire gang. When the Spain right-back burst into the box like a jail break, sprinting on to Dani Olmo’s superb layoff, and steadied himself to guide the ball into the net and score the second goal in Dallas, there was still half an hour to go in this semi-final, but it was done. They knew it was. Somehow, it was like they always had.Porro kissed the badge and raced to the corner, his teammates streaming across the pitch and off the bench towards him. He was there to protect them from Kylian Mbappé, the tournament’s top scorer and one member of that terrifying French forward line, projected as if they were the four horsemen of the apocalypse: the toughest, most fearful men in the joint. Or so it goes. Yet he won’t back down, never has, and when it came to the decisive blow, he was the one who delivered it. Instinct had taken over, if only for an instant. And what an instant it was, guaranteeing Spain would go to the World Cup final.This was Porro’s second goal here; he has scored more than he has allowed. There was a moment before the semi-final when he was asked where the balance lay between going at opponents and holding firm, not allowing them past you. “It depends on who you’re playing: against Belgium I was basically with [Jérémy] Doku all game. I only really went forward once,” he replied, adding with perfect timing: “And that was our goal.” Well played, sir. Well played all of you. Here, he went only once too, but it will be for ever. “Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this,” he said.Spain, though, could. There was a reason for that a sense of certainty when Porro scored the second. Not only because the lead was two goals but because the match was theirs. Playing out exactly as planned. Because if he was there to defend, he had done that too. Because they all had; not so much through heroism but through domination, control, mastery of the game. “We knew one of the keys was keeping the ball,” Pau Cubarsí said. France had not been able to hurt them until then and would not be able to hurt them, they knew. Not if they played their way.Which they did. When Unai Simón saved from Ousmane Dembélé on 94 minutes it was only the second time France had had a shot on target. Spain have conceded once all tournament. They were superb, a collective with no flaws. That was seen in how they took the lead and how they now held it, playing out the rest of the game, this historic occasion, with the kind of calm that hadn’t been seen since ... well, since Mikel Oyarzabal scored the penalty that started it all.Of all the people in all the world that could have stood over the penalty that put them 1-0 up, there was no one they would have rather had. “Few things in football make me nervous,” the striker said recently, and penalties are not one of them. The biggest games aren’t either. He has scored in every final he has played, including the winner against England at the Euros two years ago. From the spot, he took Real Sociedad to their first Copa del Rey title in 34 years and another one five years on. He had taken 53 and missed six, scoring 89.65%, and he wasn’t about to miss this one.The quiet man took it with the same conviction and assuredness, the same steel, with which the selección played all afternoon. “We knew that with calm we could hurt them,” Oyarzabal said. With one break for it, they killed them off. Exhausted, Porro made way late on. From the bench he watched Spain see it out to a soundtrack of olés and with a sense of complete superiority.In the stands Xavi Hernández, Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol and Sergio Ramos saw it too. When they won the World Cup in 2010, Porro had celebrated by leaping into the fountain in the Plaza de España in Don Benito, Extremadura. He was a 10-year-old kid whose parents struggled to make ends meet, working all hours, his grandad Antonio took him everywhere. Now, the day after Antonio’s birthday, he and his generation are one step from emulating that side.“This isn’t mine, it is all 26 of us” Porro said. This belonged to him and Marc Cucurella, Aymeric Laporte and Cubarsí, their other absurdly talented 19-year-old. To Rodri, who was on another plane, alongside Fabián Ruiz. To all the men who have been on the road for a month and have one more stop left, the “family”, as the coach keeps calling them, who made France look so ordinary. They may not be stars, Lamine Yamal apart, but this was a victory for the good people. Spain were Spain, just as Luis de la Fuente had asked them to be. “Tranquility is power,” he likes to say, although once in a while, when the time is just right, you have to let loose.

Football News

France finally let loose all their attacking power in this tournament and yet when the big test came against Spain they were too openMaybe Didier Deschamps was right all along. He has been criticised over his 14 years in the France job for being too cautious, for prioritising control, for not unleashing his great fleet of attacking players. In this tournament, his last as national manager, Deschamps has relaxed – from a tactical point of view at least; he remains as grouchy as ever in his public utterances. France have played some glorious football over the past few weeks but when it came down to it, against the first truly elite side they faced, they were overrun. France could have done with being a little more Deschamps.The paradox at this tournament was always that the better France played, the more of a waste the eight years since they won the World Cup appeared. Admiration for their attacking excellence in the US has been tempered by a sense of regret for the potential beauty and joy Deschamps’ cussedness has denied the world over the past decade. This was the France they could have been all that time, playing with elan and panache, evoking legitimate comparison to the glorious France of the early-to-mid 80s.It would be a stretch now to say they stand alongside the Hungary of 1954, the Netherlands of 1974 or the Brazil of 1982 as one of the greatest sides not to win the World Cup, but there was a point before the 1-0 win over Paraguay in the last 16 when that might have seemed an appropriate comparison.Deschamps leaves the job having won a World Cup and reached another final and semi-final. He reached a Euros final and a semi-final. To get to the last four of five major tournaments over a 14-year stretch sounds like a remarkable achievement and in some ways it is. But Deschamps has been blessed with generation after generation of extraordinary players; one trophy with those players is perhaps only par. And there is an argument, voiced most vociferously by those grown weary of his football labeur, that Deschamps, for all his apparent success, held France back.Why then did he change approach? He has been portrayed by some as the arch-pragmatist, committed neither to control nor to something more improvisational, but simply to what seemed best with the players at his disposal. It is indicative of just how out of character Deschamps’ selections have seemed how radically perceptions have shifted.At the Euros two years ago, France were regarded as the dour, defensive unit, playing an unlovely version of the “tournament-ball” that had carried them to the World Cup in 2018, while Spain were the dashing update on juego de posición, capable of retaining possession in midfield but elevated by the pace and directness of their wide forwards. But in this tournament, as France sparkled, it has been Spain, their attacking options from wide diminished by injury, who have suffocated opponents.If you include the Nations League, that is three tournaments in a row in which Spain have beaten France in the semi-final, process football triumphant.There has been a theory that Deschamps has been forced into his reset by the evident brilliance of his creative options, and perhaps that is true, but France have had great attacking options – maybe not quite so many or so varied as they have now – for at least the past decade. Deschamps always seemed reluctant to let his attackers simply play, to release the handbrake; this game was the perfect demonstration of why.There were only two doubts about this France: in midfield and at left-back. It was their misfortune that those matched up with Spain’s two greatest strengths. In the most obvious and direct sense, the penalty came from Lamine Yamal drawing a clumsy foul from Lucas Digne, but on a more fundamental level it was the result of Spain’s domination of midfield.The question over the past few weeks has been whether, against stronger opponents, Deschamps would replace an attacking player with an additional midfielder, changing from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3. France’s creative play was so intoxicating that eventually came to seem impossible, but here it would surely have been a good idea. There were spells in the first half when Aurélien Tchouaméni and Adrien Rabiot were overrun. As it turned out, Deschamps’s solution was not to supplement the pair but to withdraw Rabiot. After a fine tournament, he had an awful first half and, with a booking, was an obvious red-card risk.What if they had played Tchouaméni, Rabiot and Manu Koné from the start? What if they had played only two of Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola alongside Kylian Mbappé? Given how little any of those three contributed, it could not have been any worse. With Spain dominating midfield, the vaunted attacking quartet simply did not get the ball often enough. Spain’s structure stifled them and, with too many players committed to creativity, France were left vulnerable to transitions.In his ultimate defeat, Deschamps achieved his ultimate vindication. Talent is never to be trusted.

Football News

Consider this a spectacular telling-off for anyone tempted to cast Spain as underdogs. How they enjoyed dishing the lesson out here, booking a showdown in New Jersey on Sunday and reducing France to passengers. Didier Deschamps’ team had been billed as champions elect but their feted attack was never in the game. For Kylian Mbappé it will be another four-year wait to reconquer the globe; he was an isolated figure, snuffed out by opponents who completely dictated after going ahead.Spain could partly thank Lucas Digne for terrible defending that conceded a penalty midway through the first half, even if there were some doubts about the award’s validity. Mikel Oyarzabal converted emphatically and the jeopardy thereafter was entirely superficial. Pedro Porro’s slickly-worked second settled the issue emphatically. Nobody will make the mistake of downplaying their prospects of seeing the job through now; France, dazed and resoundingly beaten, cut the figure of a side that could not comprehend what was happening.A football match finally broke out after the unbearably shrill DJ-led buildup that worked tirelessly to demolish any semblance of atmosphere before kick-off. A World Cup semi-final deserves better than this, the closed roof doing nothing to alleviate the oppressive acoustic effect, but the sport has found a knack of riding out most attempts to cheapen it over the past month.These teams do not bellow indistinguishable noises into the eardrums; they are sinuous, subtle, scintillating when controlling the volume themselves. It was no surprise to see Spain sticking with the starting XI that overcame Belgium, meaning Mikel Merino would again be primed for a supersub role. Deschamps enlisted the fit-again Aurélien Tchouaméni in midfield, which felt harsh on Manu Koné, and chose the directness of Bradley Barcola over Désiré Doué’s defter gifts.Barcola skipped past Pedro Porro at the first invitation following six minutes of largely sterile Spain possession. Control would be essential for Luis de La Fuente and his players. An early chance arose for Álex Baena to take a more direct route but he smacked a free-kick into the wall from right of centre.It was that kind of start, Mbappé the next to squander a decent attack when overcooking a pass towards Ousmane Dembélé. When France found some flow, Michael Olise cushioning to Dembélé before a sublime first-time ball towards Mbappé, Spain’s defence were back in numbers.Then Digne’s carelessness blew such a respectful opening spell out of the water. The left-back did not get enough purchase on a cross from the opposite side, the ball popping up off his head and allowing Lamine Yamal to contest. Lamine Yamal nudged it past Digne, seemingly via the upper portion of his arm, and was crudely felled as his opponent panicked.The referee, Iván Barton, had an easy decision to make on that front but there was still the question of whether the video assistant referee would intervene. The on-field decision stood but replays appeared to confirm Lamine Yamal had turned limb towards ball.Oyarzabal, in no mood to reject a gift, swept the spot-kick past Mike Maignan. Within minutes France’s backline had a new disruption to absorb, William Saliba pulling up and making way for Maxence Lacroix. They were having to chase Spain and could not assert any grip in midfield. When Barcola managed another nibble at Porro, he ran out of ideas and slashed wildly over.This was a malaise, Maignan presenting a clearance straight to Baena. The sequence that ensued was thrilling, Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal combining to tee up Fabián Ruiz. It would have been a tap-in for the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder had Dayot Upamecano not appeared from nowhere to block.Spain would have to content themselves with a narrow interval lead but could consider their mission accomplished perfectly so far. For all the pre-match hype, France’s attackers had barely caused a single ripple of anxiety.Koné replaced Adrien Rabiot, a walking red card since being booked early on, for the second period. France needed 11 players but also required an uplift in every area. Instead Spain remained in total command, Oyarzabal shooting over. France could not muster enough of the ball to pose any sustained threat. When they wrought an opportunity to build down the right, Dembélé passed straight out of play.Before the hour it was time for Doué. The bet on Barcola’s speed had failed and things soon deteriorated further. While Spain had been managing proceedings consummately, they had never looked blind to another opening. Porro’s goal was worked beautifully, a tumbling Olmo managing to return his pass as a chasm opened on France’s left side. The finish was unerring; Spain were making this look easy.The scoreline would have given exactly that impression had a narrow offside call not denied Lamine Yamal a third. It was the 64th minute before Mbappé made any kind of impression, Unai Simón batting his cross-shot from the byline behind. Then he saw Marc Cucurella deflect a drive just wide but Deschamps must have been desperate for the three-minute coaching break that followed.It made little difference. Mbappé whipped a free-kick over but Ferran Torres could have added gloss for Spain, who will take some beating now.

Football News

⚽ Kick-off time: 2pm local/3pm EST/8pm BST/5am AEST⚽ Player guide | Golden Boot | Football Daily | Mail ScottSpain are unchanged following their victory over Belgium. Mikel Merino, match-winning supersub in both of the previous two rounds, once again has to make do with a seat on the bench, while Fabian Ruiz gets the nod ahead of Pedri in midfield.France make two changes to the team that started the win over Morocco. Aurélien Tchouaméni returns from injury to replace Manu Koné in midfield, while Bradley Barcola comes in for Désiré Doué on the left flank. Continue reading...