Sixteen years after winning the World Cup in South Africa, Spain, on Sunday at the 82,500 capacity MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, awed and overwhelmed Argentina 1-0 at the final of the 2026 FIFA World Cup to win their second title.
It was a befitting climax to the FIFA World Cup 2026, co-hosted by Mexico, Canada and the United States, as Spain subjected Argentina to relentless pressure, making Lionel Messi anonymous, and outplaying the South Americans in every department of the beautiful game.
It was a game in which the Spaniards made 20 attempts at goal and left their opponents confused and frustrated such that the entire match was majorly played in Argentina’s half.
But hard as they pressed, Spain did not find the back of the net in regulation time and the game went into extra time. Goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez put up a scintillating performance to deny Spain several opportunities, a few of them from close range.
Indeed, Argentina was already working towards dragging the game into penalty shoot-out when substitute Ferran Torres latched on a low header from Nico Wiliams to score the decider for Spain in the second half of the extra time.
However, the South Americans seemed to find their rhythm in the closing stages unleashing a barrage of attacks on Argentina. But their nightmare was compounded when midfielder Enzo Fernández was sent off after receiving a second yellow card for a hard tackle on Pau Cubarsí.
With Argentina reduced to 10 men, Spain dominated possession in extra time and finally found the breakthrough when Nico Williams brilliantly knocked the ball into Torres’ path, allowing the forward to fire home the winning goal.
Torres extra time winner sent a rapture of joy round Spain, indeed, among many football lovers people across the world, many of who believed that it would have been atrocious if the match had dragged into penalties and Argentina edged them out.
Torres’ contributions to Spain’s success in the just concluded World Cup will forever remain etched in the memory of Spanish fans across the world. He was instrumental in the last-gasp victory against Portugal. Spain were heading for extra time when the ball fell to him and he found Mikel Merino, whose clinical finish put his team’s fears to rest and sent Spain through to the quarter-finals.
Of his historic goal on Sunday, Torres said: “The goal is the least of it. All I want right now is to grab that [World] Cup and squeeze it as hard as I can. It’s the dream of the 47 million of us who were on the pitch today. We deserved it and we gave it our all,” said Torres to the cameras just after the match had finished.
With his historic role on Sunday, Ferran Torres has now joined the elite league of two Spaniards, alongside Andres Iniesta, of World Cup-winning goal-scorers. Torres didn’t let his difficult days pass him by; in the midst of the World Cup celebration, he reflected on his less than ideal start to the tournament: “In the end,” FIFA.com quoted him as saying, “it was a huge relief. I think I’ve faced a lot of criticism throughout the World Cup, but I believe, as I’ve already said, that destiny is written. Thank God, He’s always given me the strength to carry on and, in the end, as I say, God gives things to those who deserve them most.”
Torres broke the deadlock with a well-worked goal and cemented his contribution thanks to that decisive strike: “At the end of the day, this is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to keep working hard no matter what comes your way and, in the end, things always go to those who deserve them most,” he said later.
Torres is a very determined player, one of those who just keeps going. He may not be the most technically gifted player, and coaches have often seen him more as a game-changer than a mainstay – but what he showed in the final defines him as a player: plenty of movement, plenty of insight, plenty of goals. He’s the sort of player who finds the net because he never stops looking for it. And in this tense, drawn-out final, his reward came: “All finals are difficult; when [Lionel] Messi is in the opposing team, nerves always creep in. Ultimately, we’ve always stayed true to our philosophy, to our own style of football, and I think we’ve demonstrated that once again today.”
