2026 World Cup, Day 39: All out of goals

Every dad in the world wants you to know just one thing, right now, after the World Cup Final: defense wins championships.

I wasn't alone with my feelings about the semifinals of this World Cup. France, my thinking went, had one of the greatest attacks ever assembled, and (not always a certainty, with France) good vibes to match. And on the other side, it'd already been proved that there was simply no betting against Argentina and Lionel Messi, not after a tournament in which they had repeatedly backed themselves into ridiculous corners and then fought their way out, a Jackie Chan movie on a soccer field.

Spain? The team that couldn't even score a goal against Cabo Verde? That'd managed only single goals against Uruguay and Portugal? Nah.

But both their semifinal, against France, and their final, against Argentina, played out similarly.

1. These teams are just feeling each other out, this is a heavyweight fight!
2. Boy it's starting to look like France / Argentina are just having an off day.
3. It must be the heat / exhaustion / nerves that's keeping France/Argentina from getting a foothold in this game, but in the fourth quarter, they're going to be dangerous.
4. (later, in whispers, after Spain had allowed zero goals and zero good chances and pretty much zero anything) okay I think Spain might be the best national team ever assembled

I'm not sure we will remember the final as an exciting final, exactly, though it's hard to call a game with an extra-time tournament winner "unexciting." But I do know that on social media, the prevailing sentiment swung from "I can't wait to see this game" to "if Argentina manages to win on penalties after getting zero shots the entire game, I am going to run into the streets and burn things until the sun comes up, because of the unfairness of life." We're all thankful, in the end, that it didn't go to penalties.

Spain has now, over the past two decades, won the World Cup twice and the European championships three times, which is more or less as well as it's possible to do. The nicest thing I can say is that it's USA women's national team-esque. And given that Spain are the current women's world champions, too, it's a reminder that it's just 340 days until the next World Cup, as the USA goes to Brazil to try to knock one of these dang Spanish teams off their perch.

I'm not going to say nice things about FIFA, but commercially speaking, this tournament was an unqualified success. Stands were full despite ticket prices being off the charts, and as someone who bought tickets to three games, I'm absolutely part of the problem there. The weather was mostly okay. Everyone survived Miami in the summertime. All of the fields held up (and I hope somebody wrote down how they did it, because this was the first time I can remember that grass-over-turf wasn't even a little bit of a problem, even indoors, at least not that I heard about.)

The bad things about the tournament were mostly the various own goals scored by the U.S. government, which managed to come off worse overall than FIFA, which is an almost impossible task. CONCACAF should try asking the U.S. government to get involved from now on, so they can look like the good guys for once.

FIFA had already planned a sprawling boondoggle for 2030, with six host countries next time (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, no I'm not making that list up) and what I would rate as a probable expansion to 64 teams. If you liked never-ending soccer, just wait until you're saying things like "yeah I think England are the favorites in Group N" and "somehow the sixth game of the day is always the craziest one, hashtag #FIFAAfterDark".

Here at the end of this one, 104 games and almost 40 days did feel like a little much. Today feels less like the last day of school or the last day of summer camp, less like a celebration, and more like the last day of the State Fair. Everything's on sale and they're out of Pronto Pups. The screams from the midway sound haunted, not excited.

It's time to get back to real life. Back to vegetables, and a healthy sleep schedule, and the MLS Western Conference. It's not decadent, but it's good for us.