That’s my prediction for tomorrow. I think Spain are, with one exception, the better team. And unlike England or Norway or even France, they are a very good team. But they lack firepower, and as much as I like Yamal and Nico Williams with their speed on the side, they haven’t had a very good tournament and I suspect Argentina’s street gang tactics will manage to disrupt them.
Argentina reminds me a lot of the 2001 Patriots. They have a spirit and a drive that appears to be only matched by FIFA’s desire to send Messi out with a second World Cup trophy. When every attention-seeking Instagram influencer who can find an Argentina jersey is dancing to RESPETENS LOS RANGOS and the team reacts to every foul on Messi like a rabid pack of outraged wolves, it’s pretty clear that something unusual is in the air.
The contrast between the total indifference of the Portuguese team to Ronaldo and the teary-eyed reverence of the Argentine players for their longtime captain isn’t merely striking, it’s significant. Football is a team sport. The more players are willing to run for each other, work for each other, and fight for each other, the higher the team’s ceiling becomes. Norway lost to England because Sorloth wasn’t willing to submit his striker’s instinct to keep the ball and score to the team’s need for him to pass to Halland, while there isn’t a single Argentine player who wouldn’t made that pass.
This Argentine team is one of the few that has definitely reached its ceiling. Whether that is enough to defeat an excellent Spanish team that is better almost man-for-man across the roster, and can put its own Ballon d’Or winning midfielder, Rodri, up against Messi, is what we will have to wait to see. I think the X-factor may be that Messi knows the Spanish players, and the system, as well as he knows anything in football. He is a Barcelona legend, after all, so he knows everything about the entire Spanish roster.
The king winning one last crown, then riding off into the sunset is the fairy tale ending. Logic and data analysis tells us that Spain should win this game. And yet, I somehow don’t think they will.