Ten goals in the bronze final, one goal in the real one: Spain are world champions
So that's it. The World Cup is over. Thirty-nine days, 104 matches, more goals than any edition in history, and it ends with Spain lifting the trophy in New Jersey after beating Argentina 1-0 in extra time.
And what a strange, lopsided weekend of football it was. On Saturday we got one of the most absurd, entertaining, ridiculous games I've ever seen — ten goals, a collapse, a comeback, a hat-trick, a record broken. And then on Sunday we got the final, which was... well. We'll get to that. Let me take them in order.
The third-place game: England 6-4 France, and I still don't believe it
Nobody watches the third-place playoff. That's the received wisdom, isn't it? Two devastated teams going through the motions, nobody wants to be there, the game is a formality. Both sides had just lost semi-finals three days earlier. England had thrown away a 1-0 lead against Argentina in stoppage time. France had been suffocated by Spain. Tuchel got booed by his own fans before kick-off. England didn't even start Kane, Bellingham or Pickford — which tells you exactly what they thought of the occasion.
And then they went out and produced one of the great World Cup games of all time.
England were 4-0 up at half-time. FOUR-NIL. Declan Rice, wearing the armband, scored a curler from distance inside three minutes and then set up Ezri Konsa's header from a corner. Then Bukayo Saka tapped in from Rashford's unselfish pass and added a second with a brilliant finish from the edge of the box. Forty-five minutes, four goals, France dismantled. It was embarrassing for Les Bleus in what was Didier Deschamps' final game in charge.
And then the second half happened.
Mbappé pulled one back in the 48th minute. Then he set up Barcola before the hour to make it 4-2. Then he scored again — and with that goal he passed Lionel Messi to become the all-time leading goalscorer in World Cup history with 22 goals. 4-3. France were rampant, Upamecano was surging forward from the back, Olise was pulling strings (seven assists at this tournament, the most of anyone), and England were staring down the barrel of a humiliation even worse than Wednesday's.
But they held. Just about. Saka completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot in the 87th minute to make it 5-3. Dembélé scored in stoppage time to make it 5-4 and give France one last flicker of hope. And then Jude Bellingham — who hadn't even started — dribbled past three France defenders in the box and finished calmly for 6-4. His seventh goal of the tournament, the most by an England player in a single World Cup.
Ten goals. The most in a World Cup match since 1982, and the most ever in a third-place game. England finish third, their best World Cup since 1966. Mbappé leaves with the Golden Boot (10 goals) and the all-time record. Deschamps ends his reign getting battered in a bronze medal match.
Absolutely mad. And of course it happened in the game nobody cared about.
The final: Spain 1-0 Argentina (AET) — dominant, but strangely flat
And then Sunday. The final. Spain against Argentina at the New York/New Jersey Stadium. The immovable object against the unkillable force, as I put it last week.
Here's my honest read on it: Spain dominated. Comprehensively. From start to finish there was only one team trying to win the football match, and it was La Roja. But — and I say this as someone who watched every minute — it was a strangely lukewarm final. Not a bad game exactly, just a curiously flat one. It never caught fire. It never had that moment where you leap off the sofa. It was a slow, grinding, increasingly bad-tempered arm-wrestle that Spain won on points long before they won it on the scoreboard.
The numbers are genuinely astonishing. Argentina did not register a single shot in ninety minutes. Not one. The defending world champions, with Lionel Messi on the pitch, went the entire regulation period without troubling Unai Simón even once. Spain had ten shots with seven on target by the 82nd minute. Corner after corner. Wave after wave.
And the reason it stayed 0-0 for so long has a name: Emiliano Martínez. The Argentina goalkeeper made ELEVEN saves — the most ever recorded in a World Cup final. He was a brick wall. Yamal beat two defenders, kept the ball in play and crossed for Ferran Torres to head at goal — Martínez was there. Nico Williams came flying in during stoppage time — Martínez again. Every time Spain looked like they'd finally broken through, that man got something in the way.
Then, in the 90th minute, the game turned. Enzo Fernández — booked earlier — fouled Cubarsí and picked up a second yellow. Red card. Argentina down to ten men, with extra time to survive. And the deeper it went, the more you could feel the Argentine belief growing, because that's been their whole tournament, hasn't it? Cape Verde, Egypt, England — they'd survived every time. Penalties were coming. Everyone knew penalties were coming. And Argentina, with Martínez between the sticks, would have fancied that shootout enormously.
Thirty-nine seconds into the second half of extra time, Ferran Torres — a substitute — thumped in a shot from eight yards, and the resistance finally broke. 1-0. Spain are world champions for the second time, sixteen years after 2010.
What it means
Spain conceded one goal in the entire tournament. ONE. In seven matches. That is a defensive record that will be talked about for decades, and it's why they're champions. Luis de la Fuente's record as Spain manager now stands at something absurd like 14 wins, 1 defeat — and at 65 he becomes the oldest manager ever to win a World Cup. Rodri lifted the trophy. Yamal, at 18, leaves as one of the faces of the tournament, and young Cubarsí was outstanding all the way through as the anchor of that back line.
For Argentina, it's the end of a remarkable run. They were chasing four consecutive major tournaments — Copa América 2021, World Cup 2022, Copa América 2024 — and they came up one game short. No team has won back-to-back World Cups since Brazil in 1962, and that streak survives.
And Messi. Messi finished with 21 World Cup goals, one behind Mbappé's new record, and was moved to tears receiving his runner-up medal, staring out at the Argentine supporters. "I feel sad," he said afterwards. "They were better, to be honest." That's about as gracious and honest as a defeated legend can be. Scaloni said he felt sadness but knew they left everything out there.
If that was Messi's last World Cup — and at 39, it almost certainly was — then it ends not with the storybook second title, but with a runner-up medal and an honest admission that the better team won. There's no shame in that. He already got his fairytale in 2022. Football rarely gives you two.
And one last, entirely selfish thought
I'll be honest with you: watching Spain lift that trophy was hard.
They're the team that knocked us out. Merino's 91st-minute goal in Dallas is still lodged somewhere in my chest, and every round Spain went further, the more it stung — because it kept confirming what I already suspected, which is that they were simply better than us in every way that matters. Better organized. Better coached. Better as a TEAM, rather than as a collection of brilliant individuals. They didn't concede a goal in seven games. We couldn't string two good halves together.
That's the lesson from this World Cup for Portugal, and it's got nothing to do with talent. We have the talent. We've had the talent for years. What we don't have is what Spain have — a system, an identity, a coach who knows exactly what he wants and gets the whole squad pulling in that direction.
So congratulations to Spain. Genuinely. They were the best team in this tournament from the first whistle to the last, and they've won it in the most Spanish way possible: without ever really letting anyone breathe.
Final thoughts on the tournament
Forty-eight teams. 104 matches. More goals than any World Cup in history. Cape Verde nearly beating Argentina. Norway knocking out Brazil. Morocco eliminating the Netherlands. Paraguay burying Germany. All three co-hosts out in the last 16. Ten goals in a third-place playoff. Ronaldo's farewell, Messi's farewell, Mbappé taking the record from both of them.
I spent two years complaining about this expanded format. I was completely, comprehensively wrong. It gave us the most chaotic, unpredictable, entertaining World Cup I can remember, and it gave small nations a stage they'd never have had otherwise.
Portugal are gone. Spain are champions. And somehow, four years from now, we go again.
Thanks for reading along all tournament. It's been a hell of a ride.