La Roja reign again, and it wasn’t close.
Spain won a second World Cup the hardest way to argue with: total control. Eight matches, one goal conceded, four of the world’s best knocked out without ever leading. In the final, the defending champions did not manage a single shot in ninety minutes.
Never behind. Barely troubled.
From a cautious opener in Atlanta to the final whistle in New York, Spain saw off Portugal, Belgium, France and Argentina without once trailing on the scoreboard. The only goal they conceded all tournament came from Belgium in the quarter-final.
One goal in a month of football.
No team has ever won a World Cup conceding this little. Unai Simón picked the ball out of his net exactly once between June 15 and July 19.
A one-sided coronation.
Against the defending champions, Spain produced the most lopsided final of the data era. Argentina’s expected-goals total of 0.13 is the lowest ever recorded by a losing finalist.
Spain completed 774 of 896 passes (86.4%) in the final, both records for a World Cup final.
The individual gold, too.
Three of the tournament’s four headline awards went to Spanish players. Only the Golden Boot, won by France’s Kylian Mbappé, went elsewhere, a reminder that Spain won on collective goals, not one striker’s tally.
The metronome of the champions, controlling every knockout tie from deep.
Seven clean sheets and one goal conceded across the whole tournament.
Nineteen years old, anchoring the meanest defence in World Cup history.
Superiority, in the record books.
matches unbeaten (29 wins, 9 draws), the longest run ever recorded by a European men's national team.
nation to hold both World Cups at once, reigning men's and women's world champions at the same time.
men's world title for Spain, after 2010. The only two goals in Spanish final history came 16 years apart: Iniesta, then Ferran Torres.
clean sheets in one tournament, a new all-time World Cup record for a goalkeeper.
Data: FIFA · Opta Analyst · UEFA · ESPN. Compiled July 2026. Return to the Front Page