CAMPEONES! CAMPEONES! OE, OE, OE! CAMPEONES! CAMPEONES! OE, OE, OE!
For the second time, Spain have become Champions of the world, and the winners of the 2026 World Cup! I know you all know that and this isn’t really any major news. I just wanted to celebrate the victory of La Roja on my blog. This world cup I was cheering for the US, obviously, and when we lost to Belgium I went all in on Spain. It definitely helps that I am a huge fan of FC Barcelona, so I know a lot of the Spanish players already, like the wonderkids Lamine Yamal, and Pau Cubarsi, and the midfielders like Dani olmo and Pedri, and that handsome striker Ferran.
We had a betting pool at work about who we thought was going to win, and although I was going to cheer for the US in my heart, my money was on Spain. This team, both in the betting pool at work and on most popular sports broadcasts like ESPN that were covering the world cup, tended to fly under the radar. At least as under the radar as a favorite to win the tournament could go. The reason being that this Spain team lacks the superstar names and lineups that teams like France, Argentina, Norway and England do. France has Mbappe, Dembele, Doue, Barcola, Cherki, and Olise all as attacking players. Argentina has Messi, the greatest player of all time. England has Kane, Rashford and Bellingham, and most commentators and analysts who cover the game in English tend to be English themselves, and thus have a personal bias towards their national team. And Norway’s fans and star striker Erling Haaland have also captured a lot of media attention.
This isn’t to say that Spain does not have superstars of their own. Lamine Yamal is unreal at 18 for most of the tournament, now 19 years old, and Pau Cubarsi, who just put in the best centerback performance for a player in the history of this tournament only conceding one goal and playing an extra game of knockouts compared to previous world cups. This performance is record breaking and to do so at 19 years old is even more insane. Spain also has Rodri and Pedri, who are the two best midfielders in the world right now. With Rodri being one of the best CDMs of all time. In my opinion second to Sergio Busquets. Lamine Yamal’s contribution was massive in his ability to draw defenders to him and open up space for his team, but he only scored one goal in the tournament, and thus ducked the headlines until the end. All of these Spanish superstars don’t play in that flashy attacking position or manner that would garner them the attention of the press. They aren’t major goal scoring monsters like Messi or Mbappe. Instead they are key parts of a system, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
When playing against france and argentina, the last two world cup winners. Spain didn’t just beat them, but absolutely humiliated these teams. France with all of its attacking power couldn’t seem to hold the ball for longer than a couple minutes at a time. Argentina performed even worse, failing to even get a single shot on target in both full and extra time. It was the single most one sided final in the history of the World Cup. In fact, the only other team to play the first 90 minutes without getting a shot off in the history of the tournament was Costa Rica, who were then knocked out. To do that in the final is embarrassing.
This philosophy, that Spain may not have the best players but has the best team is something that my boss has been trying to implement for us at work. Trying to get us to work off of each other. But these Spanish players have grown up their whole lives playing together, so what can we do? My company has started employing team meals, for both breakfast and lunch, as well as a mandatory hosting of a lunch on Saturdays, which is rotated from teammate to teammate. This has made us act and feel more like a family, and although we are not the biggest names in the finance world, we too can win
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