Copa Nation World Cup Recap: Argentina vs. Spain Discussion

Still recovering from the final yesterday. It was a tough game. Argentina was not able to defeat Spain. On a game that, compared to Saturday's game between France and England, that was a festival of goals, where each team had a half to themselves. Then we saw a game that, as predicted, was very, very hard-fought. Not with a lot of opportunities for goal. Argentina didn't record a single attempt on goal. It's the first time on a final that a team doesn't attempt a goal. What happened with Argentina for this game? I think, you know, Estelloni is a very smart coach. It is indeed. You know, won them two Copa Americas, one World Cup final, and they brought us to another World Cup final. So I think their game plan going into it was that we understand that Spain is better than us. Their defense is going to lock us up like they did. In any attempt that they had, the defense locked them up. So I think their strategy was more, let's just not let them score. Because if they score, if Spain scores one goal, the game's over. I doubt Argentina would be able to score. So Argentina also played defensively. Dibu came out clutch. Very clutch. And you know, Dibu is a goalkeeper that became really famous last season. That last World Cup. That last World Cup, yeah. And also very infamous at the same time. Not a lot of popularity. There's some attitude that people didn't read the right way. But I feel like yesterday, he actually overcome all of it and showed that he's the type of player that shows up in the final. Shows up in a final, and we've seen Dibu kind of go from last World Cup being this guy, villain, super cocky, super confident, and now he's just very humble and much more quiet on the field. Also, I think that not having those dream-like seasons, the last two tournaments also kind of humbled him to come into the World Cup and work harder because in the final for me, he was one of, if not the best player, Tagliafico as well with a great defensive effort throughout. And let's talk about the other side of the equation. Let's talk about Spain because this is a little trivia fact for you guys at home. Rodri, the MVP of the World Cup, is the first time that MVP wins the award without giving an assist or scoring a goal. Wow. He just makes a difference on the field through his passes and through his energy as a player. He also won the Ballon d'Or, yeah, I think it was last year as well. Yeah, no, he's a great player. Spain, something that I noticed about Spain was that usually on the wings, teams will do 2v1s on Messi, on Nico Gonzalez, any winger. Spain was doing a 3v1 every single time on the outside, giving Argentina no chance to even get a smidge of an attack. So it was incredible to see how it seemed like there was 22 players on the field, for Spain only, not 11. And I think that also, some people read this as a boring style of play, but just the way they move the ball so quickly, so effortlessly, without a hurry to score, right? They're never in a hurry to go to the last third, they're never in a hurry to break the lines, they're very comfortable holding the ball, and just the stats talk about it, right? We see 67%, I'll pull the stats in a little bit, but just to see that it was around 67% possession in Spain, every column in the stats was lopsided to Spain's side. Do you think that this is the passing of the torch to a whole new generation? Because if you think about it, Spain is the third youngest team in the World Cup, and they won. So meaning that they probably have a good amount, probably two World Cup cycles ahead of them being the best. I think they have a very bright future. I mean, you see Pedri and Ferran Torres getting subbed in to a World Cup final, those are two of the best players in La Liga right now, so that tells you how stacked their roster is. But I mean, you never know. You never know with teams, they can be at a high, and then it can get to them mentally, and they don't perform in the Euros, and then they don't perform in the next World Cup. It really depends how much they want it.