Испани дэлхийн аваргын финалд шалгарлаа

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And then there were three. Day 34 of the World Cup saw Spain book their place in the men’s World Cup final for only the second time in their history. Day 35 will determine whether England can do likewise at the expense of Lionel Messi and reigning champions Argentina.

France had been widely regarded as favourites to win their third World Cup title this summer but they had no answer to the quality of Spain, who were 2-0 winners in Arlington, Texas, thanks to goals from Mikel Oyarzabal (a penalty) and Pedro Porro.

Spain have now gone 37 games unbeaten since March 2024, winning the European Championship along the way, and their coach Luis de la Fuente pronounced them the best national team in the world.

France, meanwhile, head to the third-place playoff in Miami on Saturday, an anticlimax for Didier Deschamps, who confirmed he will stick to his longstanding plan to leave his position as head coach after this tournament.

Today’s second semi-final sees England and Argentina renew hostilities in Atlanta, where security arrangements have been tightened in view of the enduring tension between the two nations.

Of course, the big questions at last night’s pre-match news conference focused on the historical unity between the nations, both on and off the pitch, and whether England coach Thomas Tuchel has a plan to stop Messi.

A place in the Sunday’s final against Spain at MetLife Stadium awaits today’s winners. There is, after all, a World Cup final to be played either side of FIFA’s much-hyped half-time show.

Are Spain the best team in this competition?

Spain coach De la Fuente is not one for big pronouncements but after victory over France in yesterday’s World Cup semi-final, he made an exception.

“The message (to the players beforehand) was that we’re facing one of the best national teams,” De la Fuente said. “But they (France) would have in front of them the best team. That’s the key. We are a team. When we play like a team, we’re unbeatable.”

Spain haven’t always illuminated this World Cup the way France, with their dazzling forward line, have. But if their coach was suggesting they were a more effective team — more structured and diligent in their defensive work, more controlled in possession — their performance in yesterday’s semi-final certainly strengthened that claim.

With midfielder Rodri reminding the world of the form that earned him the Ballon d’Or before he ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in September 2024, they took control and never let go.

If there was a question mark over France as they scored 16 goals in six games en route to the semi-final, it was about whether their team was a little too front-loaded. (Deschamps might feel there is a certain irony in that question, given that he was often accused by critics of being too cautious before they won the World Cup in 2018.)

Rodri was imperious for Spain against France (Lars Baron/Getty Images)

But it was working for Deschamps and France until they ran into a Spain team with the ability to dominate possession against them. It was only against Spain that the old questions about the balance of France’s team — about whether their full-backs and their midfield two were strong enough, and about whether the front players were good enough out of possession — resurfaced.

Is it too early to declare Spain favourites for the final no matter which of England and Argentina they face? It doesn’t feel controversial, based on what we have seen so far.

France and Spain had been the two best teams in the tournament to this point. But when it came to a test of which was the better team — with the word italicised to emphasise De la Fuente’s point — it ended up more straightforward than almost anyone imagined.

Stop Lionel Messi… stop Argentina?

How do you solve a problem like Messi? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Tuchel has had a few thoughts ahead of today’s World Cup semi-final. At last night’s pre-match news conference, he said he had considered “a proper, old-school man-marking” job on the Argentina captain.

Tuchel wasn’t giving much away. Or rather, he appeared to be throwing various ideas out there in order to complicate the picture. As well as saying he had considered detailing a specific player to track Messi everywhere he goes, he suggested there was a risk of focusing “excessively” on him. The contradictions appeared strategic.

The mind drifted back to England’s meeting with Argentina in the World Cup quarter-final in 1986. Then, as now, the talk was about how England could stop the greatest player of his and perhaps any generation. Now, it is Messi. Forty years ago, it was Diego Maradona.

The Athletic spoke this week to former England defender Gary Stevens, who mentioned that in 1986 manager Bobby Robson and his assistant Don Howe told him they were considered deploying him specifically to man-mark Maradona, tracking him all over the pitch.

Robson decided against it, Stevens ended up on the bench, and Maradona, having been kept (at times crudely) in check in the first half, ended up running the show, scoring one of the greatest goals of all time to add to his opener, a handball (pictured below) that he infamously attributed to ‘the hand of God’.

Stevens is far too self-deprecating to suggest he would have stopped Maradona. The point he made was a different one.

“I love Sir Bobby Robson,” Stevens said. “I was a kid at Ipswich when he was a manager and later ,he picked me for England and I have got so much time for him. I watched the documentary about him the other day and I was nearly in tears because he means so much to me.

Forty years ago England couldn’t stop Diego Maradona. Can the 2026 team do better against Lionel Messi? (Archivo El Grafico/Getty Images)

“But… I do think he spent too much time in the build-up to that game telling us how bloody good Maradona was and how he could do this to us and that to us and… I just felt it was possibly a mistake because he built Maradona up to be 6ft 5in. That will sound stupid because we all know how brilliant he was in that game and in that tournament, but personally I believe we focused on him so much — talked so much about how brilliant he was — that I think it made there a greater chance of it happening.”

It’s an interesting theory because 40 years later there is so much analysis and so much emphasis on giving players all the information and video footage they would ever want when it comes to how — theoretically — to stop or at least restrict a dangerous opponent.

The way Tuchel was talking about the different “patterns” he and his staff found in Argentina’s play, it was clear that if England cannot stop Messi, it won’t be through lack of detailed preparation — even if, as the coach said, “if we close the patterns, he will find a new one or create a new one.”

From a psychological perspective, there might, as Stevens said, be a danger in “reinforcing” an opponent’s threat in the mind of a player or a collective — even when, in Messi’s case, that danger is about as clear and present and challenging as it gets. There is also, as Stevens says, a value in recognising a) that Argentina have other top-class players and b) so do England, to the point where Tuchel’s opposite number Lionel Scaloni is likely to be giving plenty of thought to how to stop Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane.

It is an intriguing prospect, with so much emphasis on working out tactical masterplans for two teams who, at times at this World Cup, have looked far less structured and disciplined than their respective coaches had hoped.

Lionel Messi became the men’s World Cup’s record goalscorer at this summer’s tournament (Lars Baron/Getty Images)

It could be a low-risk game, with nothing left to chance, but the more you look at these teams and the emotionally wrought nature of Argentina in particular, the more you can imagine a kind of anarchy taking hold of the game — and rather than coming down to best-laid plans, it becomes a test of nerve, emotional intelligence and, ultimately, the ability to produce match-winning brilliance amid the chaos. It could be a wild one.

England vs Argentina at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta) — 12pm PT, 3pm ET, 8pm BST

How long will the World Cup final half-time show last?

At the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium 12 months ago, there was more than a little scepticism in the press box surrounding the much-hyped — and in some quarters much-dreaded — half-time show.

Would this Super Bowl-inspired show really be over quickly enough to allow the game to resume after the 15-minute break stated in the laws of the game? FIFA officials insisted it would, saying that, because the show would take place on an elevated platform, there would be no time lost setting it up on the pitch and later dismantling it.

Well, the half-time show came in within 15 minutes. But the entire half-time interval lasted a massive 24 minutes, not least because the whole thing was arranged with a television audience in mind, which meant there were commercial breaks before and after it. The match had kicked off eight minutes late too, so long did the pre-match formalities drag on. With hydration breaks, VAR checks and stoppage time on top of that, what is in theory a 90-minute game concluded two hours and 13 minutes after its scheduled kick-off time.

J Balvin’s half-time show at the Club World Cup final took place high up in the stands. The World Cup final half-time show will be on the pitch (Roger Wimmer/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)

So when FIFA announced last month that this Sunday’s World Cup final would include a half-time show, there was that same scepticism around its claim that the show (starring Madonna, Justin Bieber, Shakira, BTS and others) would last 11 minutes.

Maybe it will. But that’s just the show. And this time, it’s taking place on the pitch, which means a stage will need to be erected before and after. People at FIFA are now indicating they are working towards something like a 20-minute half-time break. Some media outlets are reporting the belief among broadcasters that it will end up closer to half an hour.

One obvious question here is whether such an extended half-time break increases the threat of injury, with muscles at risk of tightening during the interval.

FIFPro, the world football players’ union, is a frequent critic of FIFA’s commercially-driven decisions, but it said last year that there was a medical case for extending half-time breaks to 20 minutes when playing in extreme temperatures.

But FIFPro also argued during last year’s Club World Cup that hydration breaks should not take place in every game — not when playing in air-conditioned stadiums and not when the temperature is less than 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F) — and should not exceed two minutes. It argued for shorter breaks, more often and very different to the TV-friendly three-minute breaks FIFA settled on.

Football is being transformed in front of our eyes, from a game of two halves into what, at this World Cup, has effectively become a game of four quarters.

The one thing FIFA can cite, to counter the “quarters” accusation, is the fact that the clock keeps running during that three-minute hydration.

But that is an absurdity, an insult to fans’ intelligence, as if to say: “You might think we’ve done that, but look, the clock is still running.”

The clock will be running on Sunday, that’s for sure.