{"id":217180,"date":"2026-07-15T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/are-spain-the-best-team-at-the-world-cup-can-england-stop-lionel-messi-day-34-recap-the-athletic-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T14:20:07","slug":"are-spain-the-best-team-at-the-world-cup-can-england-stop-lionel-messi-day-34-recap-the-athletic-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/are-spain-the-best-team-at-the-world-cup-can-england-stop-lionel-messi-day-34-recap-the-athletic-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Spain the best team at the World Cup? Can England stop Lionel Messi? Day 34 recap – The Athletic – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Cup
FIFA World
Cup 2026
LIVE
59s ago<\/span>
Spain beat France in convincing fashion to set up a World Cup final against England or Argentina Masashi Hara\/Getty Images<\/span>
The Athletic has live coverage of <\/span><\/i>England vs Argentina<\/span><\/i><\/a> in the 2026 <\/span><\/i>FIFA World Cup semifinals<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i>
Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app<\/a><\/span><\/i>.<\/i>
And then there were three. Day 34 of the World Cup saw Spain book their place in the men\u2019s World Cup final for only the second time. Day 35 will determine whether England can do likewise at the expense of Lionel Messi and champions Argentina.
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France had been widely regarded as favourites to win their third World Cup this summer but they had no answer to the quality of Spain, who were 2-0 winners in Arlington, Texas,<\/a> thanks to Mikel Oyarzabal\u2019s penalty and Pedro Porro\u2019s goal just before the hour.
Spain have now gone 37 games unbeaten since March 2024, winning that summer\u2019s European Championship in Germany along the way, and their coach Luis de la Fuente called 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 step down as head coach after this tournament.
Today\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 date against Spain at MetLife Stadium on Sunday awaits today\u2019s winners. There is, after all, a World Cup final to be played either side of FIFA\u2019s much-hyped half-time show.
\"\"
Spain coach De la Fuente is not one for big pronouncements but after victory against France in the World Cup semi-final, he made an exception.
\u201cThe message (to the players beforehand) was that we\u2019re facing one of the best national teams,\u201d De la Fuente said. \u201cBut they (France) would have in front of them the best team. That\u2019s the key. We are a team. When we play like a team, we\u2019re unbeatable.\u201d
Spain haven\u2019t 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<\/a> \u2014 more structured and diligent in their defensive work, more controlled in possession \u2014 their performance in the semi-finals certainly strengthened that claim.
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With midfielder Rodri reminding the world of the form that earned him the Ballon d\u2019Or<\/a> before he ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament 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).
But it was working for Deschamps and France until they ran into a Spain team with the ability to dominate possession. It was only against Spain that the old questions about France\u2019s balance \u2014 whether their full-backs and their midfield two were strong enough, and whether the front players were good enough out of possession \u2014 resurfaced.
Is it too early to declare Spain favourites for the final no matter who they face? It doesn\u2019t 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<\/em> \u2014 with the word italicised to emphasise De la Fuente\u2019s point \u2014 it ended up more straightforward than almost anyone imagined.
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\u2019s World Cup semi-final. At last night\u2019s pre-match news conference, he said he had considered \u201ca proper, old-school man-marking\u201d job on the Argentina captain.<\/p>\n

Tuchel wasn\u2019t giving much away. Or rather, he appeared to be throwing various ideas out there 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 \u201cexcessively\u201d on him. The contradictions appeared strategic.
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The mind drifted back to England\u2019s 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 <\/i>spoke this week to former England defender Gary Stevens<\/a>, who mentioned that in 1986 manager Bobby Robson and his assistant Don Howe told him they were considering 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 \u2018the hand of God\u2019<\/a>.
Stevens is far too self-deprecating to suggest he would have stopped Maradona. The point he made was a different one.
\u201cI love Sir Bobby Robson,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cI 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.
\u201cBut\u2026 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\u2026 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 \u2014 talked so much about how brilliant he was \u2014 that I think it made a greater chance of it happening.\u201d
It\u2019s 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 \u2014 theoretically \u2014 to stop or at least restrict a dangerous opponent.
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The way Tuchel was talking about the different \u201cpatterns\u201d he and his staff found in Argentina\u2019s play, it was clear that if England cannot stop Messi, it won\u2019t be through lack of detailed preparation \u2014 even if, as the coach said, \u201cif we close the patterns, he will find a new one or create a new one\u201d<\/a>.
From a psychological perspective, there might, as Stevens said, be a danger in \u201creinforcing\u201d an opponent\u2019s threat in the mind of a player or a collective \u2014 even when, in Messi\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.
It could <\/i>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<\/a> \u2014 and rather than coming down to best-laid plans, this tie becoming 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<\/b> at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta) \u2014 12pm PT, 3pm ET, 8pm BST
At the Club World Cup final at MetLife 12 months ago, there was more than a little scepticism in the press box surrounding the much-hyped \u2014 and in some quarters much-dreaded \u2014 half-time show.
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Would this Super Bowl-inspired spectacle 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. 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 was in theory a 90-minute game concluded two hours and 13 minutes after its scheduled kick-off time.
So when FIFA announced last month that this Sunday\u2019s 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<\/a>) would last 11 minutes.
Maybe it will. But that\u2019s just the show. And this time, it\u2019s 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.<\/a> Some media outlets are reporting the belief among broadcasters that it will end up lasting 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\u2019 union, is a frequent critic of FIFA\u2019s 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.
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But FIFPro also argued during last year\u2019s Club World Cup that hydration breaks should not take place in every game \u2014 not when playing in air-conditioned stadiums and not when the temperature is less than 28C (82.4F) \u2014 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<\/a>.
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 \u201cquarters\u201d accusation, is the clock still running during that three-minute hydration break.
But that is an absurdity, an insult to fans\u2019 intelligence, as if to say: \u201cYou might think<\/i> we\u2019ve done that, but look, the clock is still running\u201d.
It will be on Sunday, that\u2019s for sure.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle<\/p>\n

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