How Spain Dominated Argentina

Lionel Messi has already said this was the last one. Whatever happens for Argentina at club level from here, Sunday night in New Jersey was the final World Cup match of his career and for long stretches of it he looked less like the best player of his generation and more like a man who was growing in frustration and walking through Spanish shadows in the Met Life.

Argentina did not manage a single shot until the second half of extra time. Emiliano Martínez produced a men's World Cup final record haul of saves just to keep the scoreline level for as long as it stayed level and when Enzo Fernández was sent off for a second yellow deep into stoppage time, Argentina were left to see out the biggest match in world football with ten men and a goalkeeper doing more work than any outfield player on the pitch. By the time it was done, Spain had taken twenty shots to Argentina's two and built an expected goals total roughly nine times higher than their opponents. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute and nobody inside the stadium looked surprised. The story of this final was never really the goal. It was everything that made the goal feel like a formality once it arrived - because let’s face it, it was always going to.

Spain have their second World Cup. This is how they earned it.

Spain (4-2-3-1): Unai Simón; Porro, Cubarsí, Laporte, Cucurella; Rodri, Fabián Ruiz; Yamal, Olmo, Baena; Oyarzabal.

Argentina: (4-4-2) E. Martínez; Montiel, Romero, Lis. Martínez, Tagliafico; González, Enzo Fernández, De Paul, Mac Allister; Álvarez, Messi.

Spain's plan without the ball was what you would expect from them, but it was the consistency and execution of it that made it look so seamless. They defended in a 4-4-2, the front two doing a press-and-cover job on Argentina's goalkeeper whilst also covering the No.6. This allowed Spain to stop central progression through the pivot (often Enzo) and force them into areas where they lacked natural width, which Spain could defend well. And whenever an Argentina centre-back received possession, Yamal simply did not step out to meet him. This maintained structure allowing them to match-up Argentina out wide whilst not committing too many bodies early on.

By staying matched up rather than jumping into a press, Spain kept a covering body in wide areas at every moment, which meant that the instant the ball did travel wide, they could press it hard without ever leaving a spare full-back free to receive and turn. It was not always perfect though and there were moments where Argentina could progress if Spain were too slow. On the occasions when the covering striker was half a step off his job, Enzo could receive the ball and bounce out to the free CB. That sometimes forced a Spanish winger to abandon his own man and step out to the centre-back instead. Cucurella's distance to his full-back grew visibly too large more than once for exactly this reason.

In other moments, when you don’t press the CB, naturally it will give this player time and space. If everyone was marked up ahead of him, then the long option was something Argentina could look to exploit. However, Spain had a plan for that too. Firstly, the distance of GK Simon to his defensive line was always perfect so he could be close enough to challenge a ball that came over the top. Secondly, when the moment arose to go for the long ball, Argentina’s attackers were on occasion not ready immediately. This is what caused a long ball to nobody, or simply a backwards pass from the CB, to which Spain could step up to.

Argentina's answer to Spain's build-up was to go man for man across the pitch and go hard at it, pressing even the goalkeeper directly whenever he had the ball. It is the kind of approach that can suffocate a team that has not prepared for it, but you also have to be aware that this is Spain and they often relish this sort of pressure. Spain had prepared for it, because their own structure was built specifically to punish their press. Rodri dropped regularly into the back line to form a back three, freeing both full-backs to push higher and whenever Argentina's aggression left him with a yard of space, Spain used him rather than the goalkeeper to find the longer ball forward. The same aggression produced repeated 2v2 and 3v3 contests at the back and Spain were happy to compete for the knockdowns those moments created rather than be pushed backwards by the pressure. Argentina's press was not a mistake. It simply met a side that had thought about it more carefully than they had.

A similar pattern was also happening when Spain were in-possession against the Argentinian mid-block. Rodri would sit with the back three and it allowed both full-backs to push up slightly higher to give Spain numbers wide and make it more difficult for each wide Argentina player in that midfield line to stay compact, because they always has a player on their shoulder. With Argentina’s front 2 almost invite the ball through, a play would drop to receive, dragging a player from the mid-line and creating space in attacking areas. Spain didn’t always utilise this space immediately but it was always there and they were clearly biding their time and valuing ball retention over riskier progressive passes. They would have known that b doing the latter, they might play directly into Argentina’s hands who were looking for the those counter attacking openings all game.

The bravest single decision of the night came at half-time. Spain shifted their out-of-possession shape from a 4-4-2 to a 4-3-3, pressing higher and harder to squeeze the life out of Argentina's midfield and it was a risk. Porro now had to jump across whenever the ball moved to the far side, covering Argentina's centre mid so the rest of the team could shuffle behind him, which left Yamal alone and responsible for two men on the opposite flank.

Argentina had the opportunities to switch the ball more than once. But Spain again had a plan to combat the very advantage that they had just given their opposition. Spain’s pressure on the ball high up the pitch now ramped up and they had to so that Argentina could not physically have any time and space to get that switch away to the open far-side. Whether that says more about Spain's pressure or Argentina's decision-making probably depends on how you look at it.

The theme here is trade-offs. You will always have trade-offs in football. Something that you give up in return for a reward elsewhere. Here Spain might have given up the far side and be left completely open to Argentina’s counter-attacking threat, but at the same time they took the risk of ensuring they were more aggressive to win the ball back in better areas to create better openings themselves. What thing are you happy to concede in return for greater upside? And do you have a plan to nullify the very thing you’ve just given up?

If you want the single passage of play that explains why Spain were the better side for most of the night, it is a piece of shared, coordinated movement where the ball barely matters until the very end. One player made a run forward with no intention of receiving anything, purely to take his marker with him. A second player dropped into the space that opened up, dragging an Argentina centre-back out of position to follow him. Cucurella made the third run, arriving into the space the first two had created and received the ball into his feet with time and room to drive forward.

None of those three touches would make a highlights reel on its own. Together, they were the clearest evidence all night that Spain were coached to move as a unit. This is peak Spanish Football.

There is a wider point sitting underneath all of this and it showed most clearly in the closing exchanges, with Argentina down to ten men and defending in a back five for long stretches of extra time. A good structure gets a team into the right areas of the pitch. On its own, it does not stop a cross or close a shooting lane. That comes down to something smaller and far harder to coach consistently: the exact distance between a defender and the man he is supposed to be marking in the instant the ball arrives. Here we can see Argentina doubling up on Yamal 2v1 and rightly so. But the distance of this secondary player to the spare man is also extremely important. Here Yamal’s pass is weighted perfectly allowing this player to cross first time, meaning the press can’t stop it. Much of the time, decisions are only truly good or bad with hindsight. But to a player in that exact moment the most important thing is to be aware of everything that ‘could’ happen, to be best placed to react appropriately if it ‘does’ happen.

Spain have now won the World Cup twice and this will certainly not go down as their most spectacular performance, but it may end up their most complete. This was a team that pressed with real discipline, built a plan against opponents specifically set up to man-mark them off the pitch and made a half-time adjustment that cost them defensively in order to win the midfield outright. Argentina, and Messi most of all, leave this tournament having lost the biggest match of the competition without ever really getting into it, which is a harder way to go out than losing to one moment of magic.

Spain did not need magic. They needed ninety minutes, then thirty more, of doing the disciplined thing slightly better than the team in front of them and on the biggest stage the sport has, that turned out to be enough.

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