Lost In America - Daily World Cup Newsletter: The Final - Oh Mi Corázon...

And now, we come to the end...

Spain 1 - Argentina (after extra time)

I, for one, am utterly floored that Argentina--a team with no threat out wide and no threat in behind--couldn't find a way to create anything against the best defensive midfield in the tournament.

It's hard to think of a team that won a World Cup, playing one more game than anyone else has ever had to negotiate before, in such a breeze as Spain did this one. When did they ever breathe hard? Perhaps against Portugal, but only because of how long it took them to find the goal, not because of anything Portugal was doing. Same goes for the final. The only threat to Spain was their lack of finishing combined with the size of the moment. And even those two things never really came all that close to derailing this train.

Scarier yet, this wasn't even a fully strength Spanish team. The version that won the Euros two years ago had a fully functioning Lamine Yamal on one side and a fully functioning Nico Williams on the other. This one had neither, with Yamal lacking sharpness all tournament and Williams not even getting that far in his rare appearances (though he will add a World Cup-winning assist to his ledger). Spain never really found a solution to not having those two firing, and it hardly mattered.

I get so few things right in this newsletter/documentation of my personal downfall, and seeing how Spain was going to nullify any Argentine threat wasn't all that hard, but I'll still puff my chest a bit. The Albiceleste was never allowed to get up any kind of steam, because on the rare occasions they did actually get the ball, someone was on them within a second. While Baena might not be able to replicate the direct attacking of Williams, he does the other work, and along with Olmo and Rodri and Ruiz, there's just no air for any team attempting to play their way through or around Spain.

That becomes even more suffocating for Argentina, because they had no one to push the Spanish defense back with even the hint that they could chase down a long ball, or any kind of physical presence that could hold it up on that same kind of pass, or that they might go around the press with any kind of wing play. Argentina looked at the traps and pressure Spain would apply through the middle of the field, and had no choice, or inclination, to do anything other than attempt to LEROY JENKINS! their way through four or five guys. Did it work?

I don't know if it's a testament to Argentina's guts, or their know-how, or some black magic, or whatever else that they even got this far. It's an indictment on them that they came up with no other consistent attacking threat than a 39-year-old who can barely move. And even he wasn't really all that good as the tournament moved along, not in a consistent way, outside of the 20 minutes England or Egypt simply let him whip in however many crosses his heart desired.

The bill finally came due, as they ran into a team that wouldn't be awed by them, wouldn't fall for their horseshit, and was simply better than them in pretty much every area of the field.

There had been a school of thought that an international team can't press furiously, because of the fatigue level of all the players after a domestic season, and the usual heat of a summer tournament. Spain disproved that, because they only have to press at select times, given their talent in keeping the ball. So they don't have to run around with their scrotums on fire for 90 minutes. Just the select few minutes when they don't have the ball, and then they can get a rest for the next time they have to chase it down while they knock it around. And then sometimes they can just hump it up to Yamal, or Williams in the future, when they get isolated, and they'll wreck someone's shit.

Should I mention the next World Cup is on their turf? Or that Yamal, Pedri, Cubarsi, Gavi, Williams will all be right in the middle of their primes, or just entering them? We may not be getting this trophy out of their hands for a bit.

The only drama was whether Argentina could drag this out to penalties, but they would have hardly deserved it. Spain's only flaw is the lack of a true, punishing #9 at forward, though finding one that would fit into how they play would be tricky (they'll still find one before 2028, I'm sure). While Emi Martinez racked up the saves, you wouldn't say any of them until the Yamal freekick in injury time was all that tough.

But whereas most games that see one team utterly smother the other and yet never make it count, there's always a worry about a suckerpunch the other way, in this one it was only a question if Argentina would ever get the ball. It's impressive that Spain's mentality didn't ever waver even as the chances piled up without a goal. They just continued to do what they do, never rushing crosses into the box, or trying an avalanche of shots from the parking lot, or consistently fouling Argentina around their box in too much of a hurry to get the ball back (at least until the last five minutes). They were just so assured that, eventually, the dam would break. It did.

So the best team won the tournament. For all the noise about expanding it to 48 participants and giving new countries a chance and spreading the wealth and the utter tsunami of games, it ended with the bookies' favorite sauntering to the title over five weeks.

Goodbyes

Argentina - Get lost, assholes. As Messi's power waned as the tournament went along, the true identity of Argentina that he's been able to shield to the rest of the world for the past five years came into clearer and clearer relief. Before 2021, Argentina were always known as a collection of fuckwits and asshats that would kick opponents all over the field, try to start a fight every 37 seconds, never stop harassing the ref, dare him to send half the team off, which they usually deserved, all the while playing a brand of soccer that made everyone's eyes bleed. Sometimes, they've been able to ride their snot-rocket-in-your-soup ways pretty far before this decade, but never all the way.

We can look forward to Argentina returning to their roots now. Oh, they'll still be good, there's too much talent. But once all the #10 jerseys with the tags still on them are buried in the back of closets across the globe (and especially in this country), they'll never be the bandwagon team again. Everyone else in the world will be eagerly awaiting their exit from every tournament, as we all have to slog through yet another 90 minutes of elbows to the back of opponents' heads, frequent pratfalls to draw fouls, constant hold-me-back shit, as they try to dry hump their way to another 1-0 win. It's been quite the run in the sun for them. But they really do belong back in the shadows, slithering out every so often. Argentina's true nature was shown in Enzo Fernandez trying to claim he didn't deserve to be sent off after Fencik'd Cubarsi, or Paredes punching every Spanish player in sight after the final whistle. That's the Argentina we knew before Messi. That's the one everyone will get reacquainted with, as soon as Copa America '28.

So we come to the end of this daily newsletter. And we come to a pivot point for myself.

First off, thanks to all of you who have taken this ride with me. I really do appreciate it. While it didn't result in the growth I might have hoped for at the start, it did result in some. And I'm proud of the work I did throughout these six or seven weeks. I hope it added to your experience of the tournament in some small way. Attending one game and having it on home soil really did connect me to this World Cup in a way I haven't been in a while, and I hope that came through.

Combined with the NHL playoffs, I feel like I've been going pretty hard here for a long while, and I need a break. So I'll be taking one, at least through the end of July. Maybe longer. What form this newsletter comes back in, I really have no idea. I also have no idea if it's going to come back at all.

While I've been extremely fortunate to make a living off spouting my inane thoughts about sports in written form for most of the past 18 years, I'm not sure that path is still open to me The newsletter has given me something to center the day around for the past couple years since getting laid off, and a little income, but I really do need to find full-time work now. Whether that will leave me time and energy for this newsletter, I really don't know. Maybe I need to find something else that makes me as happy as this has for nearly two decades, while also paying my bills. I don't have a lot of answers.

For now, let's just worry about a break. Again, thank you so much. We'll talk soon, no matter what comes next.