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There may not be a clear favorite on Sunday when Spain and Argentina meet in the FIFA World Cup final, but there are very noticeable differences in the way each team arrived at this point.
For Argentina, Lionel Messi is the star. He is the World Cup’s all-time leading goalscorer with 21 goals. In 2022, he was the tournament’s best player with seven goals and three assists. On Sunday, he has eight goals and four assists at this World Cup. Messi undoubtedly has a supporting role with Argentina, which is made up of global stars. But it’s Messi the star.
On the other hand, it is a completely different approach.
For Spain, there are world-class players on the roster, but the team is the star. Even with a player like Lamine Yamal, who was recently a finalist for the Ballon d’Or at 18, no single player is above the team or its system. Instead, each player fills a role in that system and sticks to that role.
Former Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Inter Milan star striker Zlatan Ibrahimović, now a FOX Sports analyst, put it succinctly immediately after Spain’s 2-0 win over France in the World Cup semi-finals.
“If I talk about Spain, I’m not talking about a star,” Ibrahimović said. “The team is the star. When they shine, they shine collectively – even if you have Yamal. This is not a team that depends on one player. It’s not an individual performance. It’s a team performance. Everything they do is as a team.”
The basis of Spain’s system
The 2010 World Cup champions (Photo by Shaun Botterill – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
At the core of this team is a system that has been under development for many years. From 2004-2008, Spain was coached by Luis Aragonés. Then, from 2008-2016, La Roja was managed by Vicente del Bosque. During these years, Spain achieved unprecedented success, winning the European Championships in 2008 and 2012 along with the World Cup in 2010. The teams were led by a wave of talent that included David Villa, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fàbregas, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué and Carles Puyol.
At the time, Spain (and Barcelona) developed and perfected the “tiki-taka” style of play, which featured constant short passing, players forming triangles to have more passing options, and a heavy emphasis on possession at a high tempo. For that generation of players, it worked. But like all things, it eventually came to an end.
It was difficult to replace that generation, as Spain failed to get out of the group stage at the 2014 World Cup and were then bounced out in the round of 16 in 2018 and 2022. However, after exiting in 2022, Spain took big steps in their development by hiring Luis de la Fuente to coach the first team.
It was a bold appointment, because despite having participated in three World Cups without winning a knockout match, Spain decided to stay on the same track and go with an insider.
De La Fuente’s fresh approach
Luis de la Fuente is a long-time coach in Spain’s system. (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP via Getty Images)
De la Fuente was promoted from within Spain after successfully coaching its youth team since 2013. Prior to that, he had been unsuccessful in coaching at club level in Spain and Portugal.
But with Spain’s youth team, de la Fuente had built something special with a new generation of Spanish players. He won the Euro U-19 Championship and then moved up an age group and led the U-21 team to the Euro U-21 Championship. His last stop before the full national team was the 2020 Olympics (held in 2021) with the U-23 team, which he led to the silver medal after losing to Brazil in the final.
Luis de la Fuente as Olympic coach in Tokyo. (Photo by Alex Livesey – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
When he moved to the first team, he knew what worked. Despite being an insider, he had his own ideas. He did not want to get rid of Spain’s high tempo and quick passing style, but instead wanted to breathe new life into it with tactical adjustments.
He got Spain to be more direct and get the ball into the attacking third quicker. De la Fuente also wanted to create overloads centrally to open up space for wingers to have more room to operate in one-on-one situations. Then in defense he developed a commitment to the team’s shape to close space and win the ball back.
But de la Fuente has not acted alone either. Other Spanish youth national team managers during his time at youth level created the same system. Just as the players worked together, so did the coaches.
Santi Denia was also a Spanish youth national team coach in that era after being appointed in 2010. When de la Fuente moved to full team manager, Denia was hired to replace him with Spain’s U-21 team and the 2024 Olympic team.
The Spanish summer 2024
Spain won the 2024 Euros for the first time since 2012. (Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
De la Fuente and Denia worked together to create an incredible summer 2024 for Spanish football.
First there was the full national team at Euro 2024, where de la Fuente’s side won all seven games to win the title. The road was extremely difficult. Spain won all three matches in the group stage against Italy, Croatia and Albania without conceding a goal. Then it rolled in the knockouts past Georgia, who hosted Germany, France and then England in the final.
As for the Olympic team, Denia won the gold medal and played basically the same system. In the knockouts, Spain defeated Japan and Morocco and then France in the gold medal match (in Paris).
Spain won the Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Summer Games. (Photo: John Todd/ISI/Getty Images)
As important as winning the EC and the Olympic gold medal was for Spain, Denia was able to develop players who made seamless transitions to the whole team after playing the same system.
Five players from the Olympic gold-winning team were included in the World Cup squad, including key players Pau Cubarsí and Álex Baena. It would have been six if star forward Fermín López hadn’t suffered a broken foot just before the tournament.
“Luis is a master of leading a team,” Denia recently told FIFA. “He understands how players tick, he knows how to guide them and he senses who should start each game. He adds his own twist to an established model, taking into account the players’ profiles. It has produced results for the association in recent years and helped us win titles. We believe in that model and Luis believes in it more than anyone else.”
2026 World Cup Run
De la Fuente was able to help create and implement a new system and style of play which was consistent within Spain’s youth teams and several of the country’s clubs. It helped to make it easier to choose a list for the WC in 2026.
But it was not without controversy either. When the roster was named, it did not include a single Real Madrid player. La Liga rivals Barcelona, meanwhile, sent eight players to the World Cup squad.
In Spain, having Real Madrid absent from La Roja on the biggest stage was highly controversial and almost unthinkable. For de la Fuente, he said the roster was “perfect” and that “it’s the 26 players we wanted.”
Once again, it was de la Fuente’s faith in the system.
“The best players are not only in Real Madrid, Barcelona or Atlético. There are very good players in other clubs,” de la Fuente explained before the tournament. “Since we have a deep understanding of Spanish football, we choose those we think best fit our system.”
The past two months have proven de la Fuente right. In the first seven games of the World Cup, Spain are unbeaten and shockingly have only conceded one goal. Its only blemishes were a 0-0 draw against Cape Verde and a goal conceded in a 2-1 win over Belgium in the quarter-finals.
Former French World Cup winner Thierry Henry, who now works as an analyst for FOX Sports, knows de la Fuente’s system well. He coached France’s U-23 team at the Olympics, which lost to Santi Denia and Spain in the gold medal match.
“The Spanish team finds a way to be successful at every level,” Henry said after Spain defeated France. “Women’s football, youth tournaments, Olympics – I lost a final against them – time and time again they come. Identity and philosophy, they all play the same way at all levels. The coach was usually a youth team coach, but because he knows the system and all the players know the system, you can see that it’s a team with stars in it. But it’s first and foremost a team effort today because, first of all, we weren’t a game. The Spanish team get the ball, they don’t give you the ball back.”
“I also want to give credit to the whole system of what they’ve put in place,” Henry added. “Because Spain used to win like that and now they win at every level.”
Spain and its impressive system will now be put to the test – against a Messi-led Argentina side who are the reigning world champions and a two-time defending Copa América champion. The ultimate system vs. the ultimate star.
