Spain is forever, damn it, because if you have to play football, you play football, and you win, and you win civilly. But if you have to go to war, you go, and you win too, and you win criminally. Because yes, because this Spain is forever, it is the world champion, it is the best, the most beautiful, and the ugliest, the thinnest, and the fattest, the tallest, and the shortest. The one that if it has to paint, it paints, and if it has to chip stone, it chips. Spain is everything you can be in football and lifts the World Cup, the second of its life, to the sky of the now unforgettable New York. [Narration and statistics (1-0)]
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Spain is forever. Because it is the triumph of ordinary people. Because it is the happiness of ordinary people. People like Unai, who could be the bus driver, Porro, the plumber, Cubarsí, the nerd, Laporte, the grocery store owner, Cucurella, who will do something, Rodri, the accountant, Fabián, the nurse, Olmo, the taxi driver, Lamine, the nini, Baena, the painter, and Oyarzabal, the… I don’t know, Oyarzabal could be anything, the neighbor upstairs, or downstairs, or next door, and would have the same face, the same calm, as scoring five goals in a World Cup. Or Merino, consultant, or Nico, rap singer, or Zubimendi, teacher, or Eric García, intellectual, or Pedri, cabinetmaker, or Ferran Torres, oh Ferran, God knows what he would be without having had the gift and the work to forever link his name to Andrés Iniesta.
The ability to unite
- Written by: JOSÉ LUIS MARTÍNEZ-ALMEIDA (Mayor of Madrid)
A very important, huge thing
- Written by: EMILIANO GARCÍA-PAGE (President of the Junta of Castilla-La Mancha)
Spain is forever. because it deserves it, damn it, because it wasn’t fair. Or yes. But no, it wasn’t fair, damn it, that Spain went 106 minutes without being able to score a goal against Argentina. It wasn’t fair that, having tried 20 times, it somehow sensed penalties it didn’t deserve. The courage of the Albiceleste was moving, honor to that team, however, that closed the final without even shooting at goal. Scaloni used all substitutions at 70 minutes because, between injuries and suffocations, there was no more. They were left with one less just before extra time due to the expulsion of Enzo Fernández and yet were able to take Spain to an extraordinary session of agony based on self-respect, courage. They had nothing else, football had abandoned them weeks ago, but it is hard to imagine another team going so far with so little.
A premise: not to make mistakes
Spain is forever. In other times, fortunately forgotten, the New York final, as it will remain in history, would have gone down the drain on an absurd play, or on a decision by a suspiciously permissive referee with the other football, or, it is written, on penalties. But no. This team adapts to everything, adapts to starting a tournament with a draw against Cape Verde and looking at everyone with a face of what’s wrong with you?, sure, they and their coach, of what was to come. This team is capable of winning a World Cup without a minimally good version of its best footballer, a Lamine Yamal who is 19 years old and will play many more World Cups. Maybe he plays very well and doesn’t win any more.
Spain is forever. Things were clear from the start. Spain went out for the match but with a premise: not to make mistakes. And Argentina went out for the match hoping exactly for that: that the opponent would make a mistake. However, the team’s play forces the opponent to make a constant effort to recover positions, to jump into pressure or retreat if overwhelmed. That, as the minutes pass, tires. Hence in the last quarter of an hour before halftime the team already found Dani Olmo and Mikel Oyarzabal better.
Spain is forever. It happens that Scaloni’s team where oxygen doesn’t reach, soul does, and it is always in the match. The final was played, of course, with the suffocation inherent to these events, with saliva stuck in the throat, pulse at a thousand per hour and a great desire to shout. It is worth talking about the grass, intolerable, dry, synthetic, turning the ball into a rabbit, untamable and harming those who most want to play it, which is always Spain.
Spain is forever. The team matured the match with the feeling that, if it was, which it was, it was by that path, that of patience. It took 106 minutes, but they achieved it, and not by chance, they achieved it with a cross from Pedro Porro, the man of the World Cup, a layoff from Nico Williams, who in the end did play, and a shot from Ferran Torres, fighting with everyone, and with himself, but now forever in the collective imagination of Spaniards, whatever that is.
Outdated values
Spain is forever. The team leaves the United States, Mexico, and Canada with the best goalkeeper of the tournament, Unai Simón, the best young player of the tournament, Cubarsí, and the best player of the tournament, Rodri. Spain leaves with the respect and admiration of the whole world, because apart from competing, and winning, it represents outdated values, those that speak of normality, respect, effort, and work. Of being good people.
Spain is forever. Like Messi, impossible to do more for him. The World Cup says goodbye to the best player in history with a game faded to black, the myth silenced by a wonderful team. Messi was a spectator. And Spain is forever.
