Spain to lift the trophy. (go back to that post if you don't believe me)
England to fall short.
Brazil to disappoint.
France to go deep.
Some of it was luck. Some of it was intuition. Some of it was educated guess (pats self on back). Most of it was simply looking beyond the shirt names and paying attention to how these teams actually played football.
For once, I got more right than wrong.
I'll take the victory lap.
A very small one.
Because predicting a World Cup is never really the point.
Living one is.
Over the last month we've watched 104 matches spread across three countries, countless time zones, and enough emotional swings to require medical supervision.
We've seen teenagers announce themselves to the world.
Veterans say goodbye.
Nations dream.
Others implode.
We've watched underdogs become everybody's second favourite team until they knocked your team out.
That's football.
Spain deserved every inch of that trophy.
There was no miracle run.
No fortunate draw.
No referee carrying them over the line.
They simply became better every single game.
By the knockout rounds they weren't just winning. They were suffocating opponents, akin with how a cat plays with a hopeless mouse.
The midfield dictated tempo like a metronome.
The press arrived in waves.
Possession wasn't a statistic.
It was a weapon.
In many ways this felt like a spiritual successor to the Spain teams of 2008-2012. Not because they copied them (in my opinon, that generation had more talent, player for player), but because they rediscovered the same footballing principles.
Control.
Patience.
Technical excellence.
The beautiful game, beautifully played.
And a word for Luis de la Fuente.
What a tournament he managed.
The easy thing for a coach to do is pick his best eleven and stick with them. De la Fuente did the opposite. He watched. He adapted. He trusted form over reputation and made changes before they became obvious to everyone else.
Pedri started the tournament as the heartbeat of the team, but after another marathon season with Barcelona, the miles were beginning to show. He looked tired. Slow. So De la Fuente adjusted. In came Fabián Ruiz, and together with Rodri and Dani Olmo they turned Spain's midfield into a footballing Bermuda Triangle. Opposition attacks entered. The ball never came back out.
The same story unfolded at right back. Marcos Llorente was the incumbent, but after an uninspiring display against Cabo Verde, Pedro Porro got his chance. The rest, as they say, is history. Two goals later, nobody was asking where Llorente had gone.
Spain also lifted the trophy despite never really having all their weapons available. Lamine Yamal was clearly not fully fit for much of the tournament and never quite reached the levels we've become accustomed to. Nico Williams was battling fitness issues throughout, robbing Spain of some of the explosiveness that normally stretches defenses to breaking point.
So not much of a wing play - which Spain is known for - without those two fully fit.
Ironically, that only made Spain lean even more heavily on what it does best: complete control of the midfield. If the wings couldn't blow teams away, the midfield simply suffocated them instead.
And then there was the number nine.
Mikel Oyarzabal had his moments.
Ferran Torres... well... Ferran was Ferran. One successful attempt out of twenty, usually accompanied by nineteen moments of collective head-in-hands frustration. Yet somehow, when it really mattered, he delivered. As they say, even a broken watch is right twice a day.
Imagine this team with Harry Kane.
Or Erling Haaland.
It's almost unfair to think about.
Spain weren't missing ideas. They were missing a ruthless finisher.
In the end, though, maybe that's exactly what made this team so special.
There wasn't one superstar carrying everyone else.
There wasn't one player you simply had to stop.
The star was the collective.
Because football, despite what social media sometimes tells us, is still a team sport.
Go figure.
But no World Cup belongs only to its champion.
We'll remember Morocco reminding everyone that 2022 wasn't a fluke.
We'll remember Norway proving that Scandinavian football has entered the stage in an imposing way.
We'll remember England once again discovering increasingly creative ways to make an entire nation reach for the antacids.
We'll remember Brazil still searching for an identity nearly fifteen years after their last truly dominant side.
We'll remember USA imploding after a strong start.
And Turkyie imploding before even getting started.
And Cabo Verde
And Germany. Poor Germany.
And we'll remember just how quickly reputations can change over the course of four weeks.
That's why we watch.
Not everything deserves applause.
The officiating was, frankly, all over the place.
One day VAR would spend four minutes drawing microscopic offside lines.
The next, obvious incidents were waved away without so much as a second glance.
The threshold for yellow cards changed from match to match.
Handball interpretations seemed to exist in parallel universes.
Players, coaches, broadcasters (even former referees) often struggled to explain why similar incidents produced completely different outcomes.
The technology isn't the problem anymore.
Consistency is.
For a competition that represents the pinnacle of football, the standards of refereeing still felt too dependent on who happened to have the whistle.
And don't even get me started on the "suspended" red card for Balogun. FIFA should be ashamed. In retrospect, the US would have probably been more alert with their goal-scorer missing
Then there's the elephant in the room.
Argentina.
No team generated stronger opinions.
Most admired them.
Some despised them.
The louder they won, the louder the criticism became.
Sound familiar?
It reminded me of the Tom Brady Patriots.
Everyone hated them.
Were Argentina aggressive?
Of course.
They've always been.
Long before Messi.
Long before Scaloni.
Long before this generation.
Argentine football has never apologised for being emotionally charged, fiercely competitive and, at times, walking right up to the line.
Sometimes over it.
That edge is part of their footballing DNA.
You don't have to like it.
But pretending it suddenly appeared in 2026 ignores decades of history.
Having clueless "Instagram fans" point to that, with no knowledge of Argentinian football should be totally invalid. Yet, that's not the world we live in. I just choose to ignore them...
As for Lionel Messi...
What else is left to say?
Every World Cup seems to become another chapter in a story we keep telling ourselves is about to end.
And somehow it never quite does.
This tournament wasn't about goals.
Or assists.
Or statistics.
It was about gravity.
Wherever Messi walked, football followed.
Every touch changed the atmosphere inside the stadium.
Every substitution felt like the audience collectively wondering whether they'd just witnessed him for the final time.
We've become so accustomed to his genius that we risk forgetting how absurd it all really is.
Nearly two decades at the summit of world football.
Every expectation met.
Most exceeded.
Club football transformed.
International football conquered.
An entire generation inspired.
Children who first watched him in grainy YouTube clips are now bringing their own kids to stadiums to say, "That's Messi."
There will be other Ballon d'Or winners.
There will be other World Cup winners.
There may even be another player who scores more goals.
But there won't be another Lionel Messi.
Not like this.
Not for this long.
Not while carrying the weight of expectation from half the footballing world every single time he stepped onto the pitch.
Whether you're Argentine, Spanish, Barcelona, neutral (or even one of those people who spent years insisting he was overrated) you witnessed something football has never seen before.
We're unlikely to see it again.
From my point of view, he WAS the best player of the tournament.
Sure, Rodri got the trophy instead (with some merit, to a degree - and take that from a Spain fan)
But Messi carried Argentina to a another final, with 8 goals and 4 assists. And the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Mbappe was good, but he had other 3 lieutenants in support (none of which showed up when it mattered)
Haaland was prolific (but his only job - minimizing it, of course - was to stay up front and score goals)
So was Kane.
Bellingham was actually impressive (a LOT more than he has been for Real Madrid all season). Until he wasn't.
So I believe Messi not getting the best player trophy was also something FIFA got wrong
Sure, he wasn't in the winning team after all, but Luka Modric in 2018 was not either (I'll stop showing off now). That trophy should take into acount the entirety of the tournament. Not just one game!
Personally?
This World Cup gave me memories I'll carry forever.
Watching Spain in Dallas.
The endless ticket drama.
The conversations with strangers who became friends for ninety minutes.
The beers.
The songs.
The tension before kick-off.
The silence after missed chances.
The roar after goals.
The photographs.
The moments where thousands of people who couldn't even speak the same language somehow spoke football fluently.
Those are the things FIFA can't package.
They just happen.
Eventually another World Cup will arrive.
New stars.
New favourites.
New controversies.
New VAR debates.
New predictions.
Some of mine will undoubtedly age terribly.
That's part of the fun.
But 2026 reminded me why this tournament remains unlike anything else in sport.
For one month every four years, billions of people stop arguing about politics, work, deadlines and ordinary life...
...and start arguing about left backs, offside traps and whether that was really a penalty.
Honestly?
The world could use more of that.
Until 2030.
Gracias.
Gracias, España.
Gracias, Leo.
And thank you, football.
We'll do it all over again soon enough.
