Deportes

For the second time in its history Spain

Ferran Torres, scorer of the second most important goal in the history of Spanish football after Andrés Iniesta’s in Johannesburg in 2010, could not contain his emotion after being crowned world champion: “The goal belonged to 47 million people, it was not mine. The script was written for us to win.”

Spain rules the world, a reality reflected in its football and confirmed by the World Cup. The second star is already flying back to the Peninsula to be embedded on the chest of an admirable team, which has a new hero. From Foios, Ferran Torres burst into extra time to disguise himself as Iniesta and open the doors to eternity with a left-footed shot. A goal that transferred the overwhelming superiority of the Spanish team to the scoreboard, wiping Argentina off the map without any hesitation and ending the Messi era in tears.

Later than Spain, Argentina announced its lineup. Lionel Scaloni waited to know Luis de la Fuente’s starting eleven before revealing his starters for the big final. And the current champion has prepared changes to defend the title. The coach makes three changes with the inclusion of Montiel at right back and De Paul and Nico González. None of them started the semifinal against England, but all three finished it.

Luis de la Fuente has decided to repeat the same eleven with which Spain defeated Belgium in the quarterfinals and France in the semifinals, to face Argentina in the World Cup final.

It was a match to inflate numbers and aim for records, and it did not disappoint. Miami witnessed the highest-scoring game among the 103 played in the World Cup. England took the bronze after a great first half in which France did not show up. The French reaction in the second half served to add excitement and for Mbappé to achieve his double scoring objective. With a double to make it 3-4, he extended his lead in the Golden Boot (10 goals, two more than Messi) and became the top scorer in World Cup history with 22 goals (one more than Leo). The final is still to come.

As president of Barça and a culé, I am very proud that today eight players from our team, Cubarsí, Pedri, Olmo, Lamine Yamal, Gavi, Èric Garcia, Ferran Torres, and Joan Garcia, can be crowned world champions. And also that many players from the national team…

An unprecedented final will decide the world champion today. Argentina and Spain face off, two nations passionate about football that speak the same language and have maintained for decades a system of interconnected vessels unparalleled in the international scene. The mastery Di…

How to start writing once again if four years ago in Qatar we thought that Leo Messi, finally pocketing his World Cup, would send everything to hell to retire and rest with his beloved family. Here we all are again, including him, in another final at 39 years old, exhausting the vocabulary of journalists, who repeat ourselves more than garlic trying to be original without succeeding. If only it were that he keeps playing… That’s not the point. The words would be different if he had failed, if he dragged himself as his birth date would suggest. How sharp the pens and voices would be then, always more clever for criticism than for praise. But no. Eight goals and four assists signed in seven matches. Again the best, GOAT, the greatest. Where does this guy come from? Why does he keep playing? It’s not for money. He already has enough to buy all of Rosario and Castelldefels. It must be because he enjoys it.

This is just football, but enough because football is everything. It is politics, sociology, and economics. It explains a society, the anesthesia, it unites and divides us, it drives us to put our arms in the trash and find the witch’s mirror, the one that tells us we are the most handsome, stupid, and generous, but, at the same time, that there are others just as handsome, stupid, and generous. And also, when the case arises, racist, irresponsible, and cruel. Belonging to a club, to a national team, these days defines us, integrates us, prevents us from answering unanswerable questions, places us in rituals and calendars tied to curiosity, to the amazement of the game as a life lesson, its spectacularization.