Испани, Аргентины шигшээ багууд Дэлхийн аваргын цомын төлөө өрсөлдөнө

Today’s World Cup final in New Jersey between Spain and Argentina is a star-studded encounter — but how much do you know about each squad’s players?

Which Spain player, for instance, doesn’t believe in the benefits of suncream? Who has promised to get a tattoo of their team’s coach if they lift the trophy? And which star is named after a famous U.S. singer?

Here, our writers have compiled a fact you may not know about each of the 52 players in the finalists’ squads.

Spain

Goalkeepers

Unai Simon

Simon is a chess addict who regularly plays against his Spain team-mates, including Dani Olmo. Simon told Spanish channel RTVE he was “100 per cent” the best chess player in the squad — which is disputed by Olmo.

David Raya

Raya may now be a Premier League champion with Arsenal but at 19 he was playing for Southport in the fifth tier of English football. His career took off after an FA Cup third-round tie against Championship side Derby County in January 2015.

Joan Garcia

Garcia is from Sallent, a Catalan village of 7,000 inhabitants and loves the mountains, where he spends much of his free time. He is known for having a cool head and always plays the same two songs when getting off the team bus — Not Afraid by Eminem and Live Your Life by T.I.

Defenders

Pedro Porro

Porro is really close to his grandfather. The Spanish FA posted an emotional video showing a video call between the pair after Porro’s first international goal against Austria earlier in the tournament. His grandfather joked he had pushed the ball into the net for the defender.

😍 ¿Puede molar más Pedro Porro hablando con su abuelo de su primer gol con la @SEFutbol?

👶🏼 ¿Y la dedicatoria a su pequeño qué?#VamosEspaña | #CopaMundialFIFA pic.twitter.com/KO6bTSF1sG

— Selección Española Masculina de Fútbol (@SEFutbol) July 5, 2026

Marcos Llorente

Llorente has become known for his unusual and often controversial lifestyle, including spending as much time as possible in the sun without suncream, as he doesn’t believe in its benefits. He wears yellow-tinted glasses during the day and red-tinted glasses at night.

Aymeric Laporte

Laporte was born in the French town of Agen and won the Under-19 European Championship with France in 2011 and 2012, before switching allegiances to Spain after moving to Bilbao’s Athletic Club as a youngster.

Pau Cubarsi

Cubarsi is from a family of carpenters and made a stool for a final-year project in sixth form. “If one day football doesn’t go so well, carpentry will always be there, that’s clear,” he told El Mundo last year.

Marc Pubill

Pubill is extremely superstitious. His mother Ana told Spanish radio station Cadena Cope this week about the defender’s curious pre-match routine: “He steps onto the pitch with his right foot, he jumps up three times and he touches his bottom”.

Eric Garcia

A football geek who watches at least four matches a day on weekends — mostly La Liga and the Premier League — on multiple screens. He is also a huge NBA fan and watches as many games as he can.

Marc Cucurella

Cucurella and coach Luis de la Fuente are very close. In an interview with Cope, the left-back promised to tattoo De la Fuente’s face on his body if Spain win the World Cup. He didn’t say where.

Will Marc Cucurella and Luis de la Fuente be celebrating again, as they did here after the Euro 2024 final, tonight? (Tom Weller/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Midfielders

Rodri

Rodri is the only player in the squad without a public Instagram, X or TikTok account and didn’t even post a picture of himself with the Ballon d’Or he won in 2024. “I don’t care about social media or £400 trainers,” he wrote in an article for The Players’ Tribune.

Martin Zubimendi

Another keen chess player in the squad who was champion of the Basque province of Gipuzkoa in that discipline as a child. He was in contention to become chess champion of the Basque Country, but didn’t go to the tournament as it clashed with a football competition.

Pedri

Pedri possesses a lovely head of hair but strangely the 23-year-old quite fancies throwing it all away. “I’ve always wanted to go bald, I don’t know why,” he wrote in a Q and A session with fans on YouTube channel The Residency in 2024. Perhaps it is something to do with his childhood idol being Andres Iniesta.

Andres Iniesta scores Spain’s World Cup-winning goal in 2010 (Franck Fife/ AFP via Getty Images)

Fabian Ruiz

Ruiz comes from the same Andalusian town as Gavi near Seville, Los Palacios y Villafranca. Every time he has won a major trophy, his hometown has marked the occasion by giving him his weight in tomatoes — around 80 kilograms’ worth.

Mikel Merino

Merino celebrates all his goals for Spain by running around the corner flag. That was his father Miguel Merino’s goal celebration — in tribute to his mother (Mikel’s grandmother) — after he scored for Osasuna against Stuttgart in 1991. At that stadium 35 years later, Mikel scored a winning header for Spain against Germany at the Euros.

De Miguel a Mikel 🤝

La celebración de los 𝑴𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒐 🇪🇸#DAZNMundial #FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/SplZFNf8TY

— DAZN Fútbol (@DAZNFutbol) July 6, 2026

Gavi

Gavi is a big music lover who took solace in his favourite artists’ work after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in 2023. He likes everything from Pearl Jam to Michael Jackson and Blur to Taylor Swift and One Direction — even striking up a good relationship with Louis Tomlinson.

Alex Baena

Baena was punched by Real Madrid’s Federico Valverde after a La Liga match at the Bernabeu in 2023. He told Cope during this tournament he “almost left football” because of that incident and how it affected his family — before he effectively eliminated Valverde’s Uruguay in the group stage with his winning goal in Guadalajara.

Forwards

Mikel Oyarzabal

In his early 20s, Oyarzabal combined playing for Real Sociedad with studying for a university degree in business administration and management, living in a city centre student flat with two school friends.

Lamine Yamal

Nothing can beat those photos of Lionel Messi bathing a baby Yamal, but did you know he started studying cookery after getting the equivalent of his high-school diploma at the Euros? That’s what he told late-night show El Hormiguero in 2024, although he admitted at the time the best he could produce was chicken and chips…

Lamine Yamal: cooking on the pitch, perhaps not off it (Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Ferran Torres

He was born on February 29, 2000 — a leap year — so his actual birthday only happens every four years. His self-given nickname is ‘the shark’, which he chose in summer 2023 after consulting with a sports psychologist, hoping to project a more fearsome image.

Borja Iglesias

After former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso without consent following the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, Iglesias said he would not play for the men’s national team again while Rubiales remained. Javier Bardem has worn an ‘Iglesias 26’ Spain shirt in the stands at this World Cup in recognition of the striker’s stance on social issues. Iglesias and Hermoso — who is working as a pundit at this tournament — shared an emotional embrace after last week’s semi-final.

Spain striker Borja Iglesias (Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)

Dani Olmo

Olmo speaks fluent Croatian after leaving Barcelona’s academy aged 16 to join Dinamo Zagreb. He even gave press conferences in Croatian there and also speaks Catalan, Spanish, English and a little German from his time at RB Leipzig.

Victor Munoz

Munoz is a very rare case of a player who developed at both Barcelona’s academy from 2014-2017 and Real Madrid’s youth system from 2021-2025. But he only truly broke out last season after leaving Madrid for Osasuna, before securing a big move to Liverpool this summer.

Nico Williams

Wiliams’ parents Maria and Felix were born in Ghana and travelled across the Sahara Desert to the Spanish enclave of Melilla, in North Africa, when Maria was pregnant with Nico’s older brother, Inaki. They both play for Athletic Club, but Inaki represents Ghana at international level.

Yeremy Pino

Pino was all set to play for Spain at the 2019 Under-17 World Cup before he was hit in the face in training a few days before by an accidentally misplaced pass from Pedri. That caused an eye injury, which ruled him out of that tournament.

Argentina

Goalkeepers

Emiliano Martinez

Martinez is nicknamed “Dibu” because of a striking resemblance when he was younger to the main character from the hit 1990s Argentinian TV series Mi familia es un dibujo (‘My family is a drawing’), who has reddish hair and a face full of freckles.

Emiliano Martinez pulls off a memorable save against Randal Kolo Muani in the last World Cup final (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

Geronimo Rulli

Rulli’s role model is Benji Price, the goalkeeper from the anime series Captain Tsubasa. He was once gifted a print of the character by the show’s creator Yoichi Takahashi and said he would display it at his home as if it were “more than a trophy”.

Juan Musso

Musso is a firm believer in the power of yoga. In 2021, he told Argentinian outlet Infobae he had been practising it for six years. “It changed my way of thinking,” he said.

Defenders

Gonzalo Montiel

His younger brother Santiago is also a footballer and in 2025 won the Puskas Award for scoring the best goal in the world — an overhead kick from distance for Independiente against Independiente Rivadavia in the Argentinian top flight in May.

We’ll never tire of this goal. 🤸‍♂️

Santiago Montiel with a Puskás award winner to remember. 💫

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 16, 2025

Nahuel Molina

Molina spent time at an Argentinian offshoot of Barcelona’s academy from 2011-12, which included a trip to Spain to train at La Masia. “I’d never got on a plane before,” he told La Nacion in 2021. “In the first few days, I didn’t touch the ball; their quality was different.”

Lisandro Martinez

Like many Argentinians, Martinez is not afraid to express his emotions — but the man known as “the butcher” for his style of play has said his partner Muriel showed him “a lot about being a man”. “I love to cry, I love to express myself, I love to give love,” he told Filo News this year.

Lisandro Martinez celebrates Argentina’s quarter-final win against Switzerland (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Nicolas Otamendi

Otamendi’s path to professional football was unconventional. As a youngster, boxing was his main sport at first. He is nicknamed “The General,” a reference to his signature military-style goal celebration.

Leonardo Balerdi

In 2023, a Marseille supporter claimed to be staging a hunger strike outside the club’s training ground until Balerdi was offloaded after a series of mistakes in games. The defender seemed to see the positive side in a 2024 interview with L’Equipe. “I like when people speak badly about me; it motivates me too,” he said.

Cristian Romero

He is known as “Cuti” Romero. The nickname was given to him as a child by his elder sister Aldana, because she couldn’t say “Cristian” — just one fun footnote in The Athletic’s in-depth report from 2021.

Facundo Medina

He grew up in Villa Fiorito, a neighbourhood in Lomas de Zamora, within the Buenos Aires province. The most famous person to come from that neighbourhood? Argentina legend Diego Maradona.

Nicolas Tagliafico

As well as football, Tagliafico is a talented artist who draws anime cartoons. A video on his YouTube channel from 2024 showed him drawing some of the main characters from the Dragon Ball series.

Midfielders

Leandro Paredes

The Boca Juniors midfielder was scouted by their fierce Buenos Aires rivals River Plate when he was five years old but locked himself in his room and cried when River officials came to his house, as he told streaming channel Olga in 2024. Six months later, Boca came calling.

Rodrigo De Paul

Argentina have a ritual involving candy before each match thanks to De Paul’s late grandfather Osvaldo — so much so that the Argentinian FA confirmed to The Athletic they travelled to the U.S. with 500 kilograms of the stuff.

De Paul and his team-mates chew on candy before each match for good luck and as a tribute to Osvaldo, who would take his grandson to training when he was younger and give him a few coins to buy himself a treat each time.

Rodrigo de Paul: loves a sweet (Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)

Exequiel Palacios

Palacios might have joined Real Madrid when he was at River Plate, telling Spanish newspaper Marca that club staff “travelled to put me through a medical, but ultimately it didn’t work out because of something to do with injuries”. He still got to train under Madrid icon and future Blancos coach Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen.

Enzo Fernandez

Enzo is named after the River Plate legend Enzo Francescoli, who represented Uruguay at two World Cups. Fernandez started his professional career at River Plate in Argentina before moving to Benfica (and then Chelsea).

Alexis Mac Allister

His older brother, also a footballer (who plays for Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise), was named Kevin Mac Allister after the character in Home Alone. He didn’t realise this until a journalist asked him about it when he was 18.

Giovani Lo Celso

Lo Celso missed the 2022 World Cup through injury but it did mean he was present for the birth of his daughter. His wife’s waters broke when Lionel Messi scored against Mexico, a goal that rescued Argentina from the brink of elimination.

Speaking to TyC Sports in 2023, he said: “It was in the middle of the match, Leo scored the goal and we had to leave. I remember that I was watching the game on the phone on the way to the hospital. I watched Enzo’s (Fernandez) goal from the car. Later, we went in there and at dawn my daughter was born. I was present all the time; it is something unique, something magical, that life allowed me to witness.”

Valentin Barco

As a youngster at Boca Juniors, Barco travelled for four hours to and from training sessions with his mother and father from 25 de Mayo, a city in Buenos Aires province.

Forwards

Lionel Messi

His first contract with Barcelona was written on a napkin, which was later auctioned for nearly $1million in 2024. Perhaps more curiously, Messi’s mother named him after Lionel Richie — and the pair met last year.

Nico Paz

Nico is the son of another Argentina international, Pablo Paz, who represented them at the 1998 World Cup in France. Nico was born in Tenerife but chose to play for Argentina over Spain.

Thiago Almada

Almada is one of many Argentinian players who have escaped poverty through football. He is from the same Buenos Aires neighbourhood, Fuerte Apache, as former Manchester City, Manchester United and national team forward Carlos Tevez.

Nicolas Gonzalez

Gonzalez has played everywhere across the frontline and at left-back for his country — the position from which he made his breakthrough in a November 2020 World Cup qualifier against Paraguay, scoring a header. “People from outside asked: ‘Who is Nico Gonzalez, where does he play?’,” he said in a radio interview with Oral Deportiva. “I really liked shutting people up.”

Giuliano Simeone

Giuliano, who is the son of his Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone, suffered a fractured fibula and a dislocated ankle during Alaves’ 2023 pre-season. Diego was flying to Madrid at the time and only found out upon landing, driving to the Basque Country to be with his son. Giuliano hadn’t even played in the Spanish top flight yet, but told his agents he would play at the 2026 World Cup.

Diego Simeone and his son Giuliano with Atletico Madrid (Lars Baron/Getty Images)

Lautaro Martinez

Nicknamed ‘El Toro’ (the bull) for his aggressive style of play, Lautaro is also deeply religious. He tucks an image of Our Lady of Lujan, the patroness of Argentina, inside one of his shin guards when playing.

Jose Manuel Lopez

Known as El Flaco (the skinny one), he arrived at Brazilian club Palmeiras looking very… well, skinny. He managed to gain 10 kilograms of muscle mass through a personalised nutrition and fitness training programme.

Julian Alvarez

He was given the moniker “La Araña” (the spider) during his childhood because of how quickly he glided across the pitch — as if he had eight legs. The nickname stuck and has carried on into his professional career, with Alvarez even celebrating goals as if he were Spider-Man.

Julian Alvarez’s trademark celebration (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)