Spain achieved another remarkable and thoroughly deserved footballing triumph by winning the 2026 World Cup, two years after being crowned European champions. In doing so, it repeated the feat of 2010, when it lifted the World Cup after winning the European Championship — a competition it would go on to win again in 2012. Spain has now claimed two of the past five World Cups and three of the past five European Championships over an eighteen-year span. To these successes must be added the world title currently held by its women’s team, several Olympic crowns, and a host of honours at youth level.
This triumph rewards a Spanish generation that plays with assurance and imposes its authority regardless of the opposition. It dominates possession, occupies space superbly, and attacks with equal fluency down the flanks and through the middle. The players’ finely coordinated movement continually provides the playmakers with several passing options, thereby limiting the opposition’s chances of winning the ball back and launching counter-attacks.
The final against Argentina, the reigning champions, perhaps offered the fullest demonstration of this superiority. Led by Rodri, Cucurella and Lamine Yamal, Spain maintained its grip on the game despite the physical intensity of the duels, Argentina’s midfield pressure, and its compact defensive block. The contest remained finely poised until Ferran Torres struck the winner with his left foot early in the second period of extra time, at the end of a move that combined quick interplay on the ground with aerial exchanges between Yamal, Porro and Williams. Messi and his teammates were unable to find a late equalizer, as they had against Cape Verde, Egypt, Switzerland and England. Fatigue, a scarcity of clear chances and attempts on goal due to Spanish domination, and their numerical disadvantage following Fernández’s dismissal late in normal time ultimately proved decisive.
Spain also swept the tournament’s leading individual awards: Rodri was named Player of the Tournament, Cubarsí Best Young Player, and Simón Best Goalkeeper.
England, meanwhile, finished third for the first time in its history after defeating France 6–4 in a match that broke free of all tactical logic and collective discipline. It became a breathless, end-to-end succession of attacks and counter-attacks, shaped in the first half by French defensive errors rarely witnessed at this level, and followed by a second half of extraordinary balance — one of the finest passages of attacking football in the tournament, with six goals in forty-five minutes.
For France, Kylian Mbappé won the Golden Boot with ten goals. He also moved ahead of Messi in the all-time World Cup scoring chart, with twenty-one goals to the Argentine’s twenty. The prospect of appearing at the 2030 World Cup should allow him to extend that lead considerably. His international teammate Michael Olise finished as the tournament’s leading assist provider, despite a marked drop in form in France’s final two matches against Spain and England.
The Continental Rivalry
Europe took its total of World Cup titles to thirteen, shared among five national teams — Italy, Germany, France, Spain and England — compared with South America’s ten, won by three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. As so often before, no first-time winner entered the exclusive circle of world champions, and no outsider reached the last four. The latter stages therefore produced no genuine surprise. Morocco alone once again established itself among the elite: a semi-finalist in 2022, it reached the quarter-finals this time and is already preparing for the next tournament, which it will co-host with Spain and Portugal.
While Asian and North American football — Mexico apart — appeared weak and lacklustre, with all of their teams eliminated in the early rounds except the United States, which reached the last sixteen, African football made a far stronger impression. Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, DR Congo and Cape Verde, alongside Morocco of course, all produced creditable performances. Algeria and Ghana were a level below, while Tunisia and South Africa disappointed and offered little that will endure in the memory.
Cape Verde and Egypt nevertheless deserve closer attention. At various points in their matches, both produced football of a high order, combining competitiveness, technical quality and a genuine capacity to spring an upset, even if neither matched Morocco’s run nor reached the quarter-finals.
Cape Verde surprised Spain in its opening fixture with the solidity of its defense and the heroics of an exceptional goalkeeper. It held Spain to a draw, then shared the points with Saudi Arabia and Uruguay before progressing to the knockout stage. There it played the match of its life against Argentina and came close to taking the reigning champions to a decisive penalty shoot-out. Its lines remained compact and mutually supportive, goalkeeper Fozinha continued to excel, and its attack scored twice before being undone by a late winner.
Egypt, for its part, produced a series of fiercely competitive performances. It drew with Belgium and Iran before defeating New Zealand and Australia. Its encounter with Argentina contained some of the most exhilarating moments of the entire tournament. The goal ruled out following a contentious VAR intervention may well have been the finest of the World Cup: Haitham Hassan beat three opponents during a surge of nearly sixty metres through a narrow channel along the touchline, before finding Mohamed Salah, whose perfectly timed supporting run through the centre drew two Argentine defenders with him. Salah then threaded a precisely weighted through ball to Mostafa Ziko, bursting forward to his left; Ziko drove into the penalty area and lifted the ball over the goalkeeper. Three Egyptian players had covered eighty-five metres, outplayed six Argentine pursuers, and found the net. Only minutes after that magnificent move was disallowed, they struck again through another sequence of incisive, accurate passing, this time producing a goal that stood. Their first goal had been equally impressive: Emam Ashour’s slaloming run and series of feints preceded Yasser Ibrahim’s header into the far corner of the Argentine goal.
Organization and Refereeing
Staging the tournament across three countries and over distances continental in scale inflicted serious environmental damage. The extensive air and road travel required by the vast distances between Canadian, American and Mexican cities drove up emissions. This was compounded by the heavy use of air conditioning in hotels, the teams’ successive base camps and some stadiums, as well as by excessive consumption of water and plastic and intensive use of mobile networks and the internet at the height of summer.
By contrast with the protests raised by several international environmental organisations during the previous World Cup, played in six stadiums in Qatar — a country smaller in area than a single major American city — there was barely a murmur this time about pollution and overconsumption. This silence, largely explained by political considerations, now deprives those who observe it of some of the credibility in whose name they claimed to speak four years earlier.
The tournament was also marred by racist and discriminatory practices in the United States, in the face of which FIFA president Gianni Infantino remained silent. He already stands accused of favouritism, of manoeuvring to secure his re-election, and of seeking constantly to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump and the American authorities, whose law-enforcement and judicial agencies opened investigations into FIFA corruption a decade ago and brought about the downfall of its then president, Sepp Blatter. These practices included refusals of entry, enforced delays and differential treatment imposed by the American authorities on a Somali referee, the Iraqi team’s photographer, the entire Iranian delegation, and several Senegalese players and officials. The relevant bodies likewise failed to act against racist chanting in the stands — particularly among sections of the Argentine support, where abuse directed at Black players has long been recurrent — until American influencers, artists and several police officers were themselves targeted.
As for breaches directly attributable to FIFA, the round of sixteen was marked by a blatant violation of football’s rules: the American forward Balogun was allowed to play against Belgium despite being suspended after receiving a red card in the previous match against Bosnia. The decision followed a telephone call from US president Donald Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. The United States’ defeat probably prevented the episode from developing into a full-blown scandal: the Belgian federation and UEFA lodged protests, but the matter went no further after Belgium’s emphatic victory and the Americans’ elimination.
Haiti was also forced to alter its kit at short notice. FIFA had ruled that certain visual elements might be interpreted as political under its equipment regulations. Yet the image in question was neither a slogan nor a political injunction: it depicted the Battle of Vertières, fought on 18 November 1803, when Haitian revolutionaries won a decisive victory over the occupying French army and opened the way to the independence proclaimed on 1 January 1804. To reduce the commemoration of such a foundational event in the country’s history to a political message seems both reductive and deeply questionable, at a time when the world professes to celebrate the abolition of slavery and the end of colonial domination.
On refereeing, it would be difficult to argue that this tournament was either better or worse than the major competitions that preceded it. Some matches featured the kind of mistakes seen in any major tournament; others were well officiated. The referee’s performance in the final was broadly acceptable, despite the disallowing of a Spanish goal for an infringement that was difficult to identify clearly. The Egypt–Argentina match, by contrast, was poorly handled: The Argentines’ physical challenges and fouls were not punished as severely as comparable infringements by the Egyptians. That imbalance consolidated Argentina’s dominance during the final half-hour and intensified the pressure on the Egyptians, who were denied the breaks in play that normally follow a whistle — stoppages that interrupt momentum, disrupt the rhythm, and return possession to the other side.
The End of an Era
With this World Cup, an era of football shaped above all by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — followed by Luka Modrić, Mohamed Salah, Kevin De Bruyne and a handful of others who formed its constellation of stars — came to an end. This generation left the stage amid profound disappointment, with the exception of Messi, who won the previous World Cup in 2022: in their final appearances for their national teams, none succeeded in reaching the last four.
The close of this era also brought down the curtain on Neymar’s frustrating international career. Brazil’s star and all-time leading scorer failed to win a major title with his country throughout his years with the national team. For a season or two, he had reached a level comparable to Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, before injuries and indiscipline caught up with him and his performances began a steady decline over the past eight years.
The World Cup therefore ended in a Spanish triumph — a double triumph, sporting and political. Spain’s left-wing prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is an avowed political opponent of Donald Trump and of Trump’s right-wing populist ally, Argentina’s president Javier Milei. During the trophy ceremony, several Spanish players displayed a pointed reserve towards Trump, notably the goalkeeper Unai Simón, the star Lamine Yamal, and the substitute Iglesias, all known for their support for the Palestinian cause. Captain Rodri’s gesture on the podium was equally conspicuous: with a sweep of his hand, he motioned for Trump to step aside so that he could lift the trophy and celebrate with his teammates. Infantino was then obliged to intervene, spare further embarrassment, and escort a hesitant Trump out of the frame of the final photograph...
Ziad Majed
