British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

Well done, Spain, very well deserved 2026 World Cup Champions.

Clearly not a great final in being so very far from too and fro, I still found it kind of captivating and watched it right through. I realise many will feel differently ( they certainly do on other plarforms ) but I have quite a lot of of admiration for the organisation, desire and fight by that Argentina showed during the match. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and while I certainly wouldn't want too many teams playing like that, as I say, it made for me a really interesting match.

But if and when you lose, lose with dignity. Absolutely shameful by some of the Argentina players after the final whistle with being so up for a literal fight, notably not Messi who while so emotional as time after the game went on, simply went round shaking Spanish hands. Then for me Messi competes with Maradona as the GOAT, a bit ahead of the Portuguese fella. Sorry Pele, you were too early even for me.

Overall I thought a very good World Cup, football won out in spite of the worst efforts of FIFA at times and the climate proved less of an issue than in last year's World Club Championship. Many dramatic late goals and great stories like Cape Verde. Also with some exceptions on the whole decently reffed and VAR also on the whole was employed well, I'd say better than often seen in England and Scotland.

Roll on Euros 2028 UK and Ireland. And World Cup 2030 Spain, Portugal and Morocco ( and err Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay for one match each ).

indiana wrote:

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Well done, Spain, very well deserved 2026 World Cup Champions.

Clearly not a great final in being so very far from too and fro, I still found it kind of captivating and watched it right through. I realise many will feel differently ( they certainly do on other plarforms ) but I have quite a lot of of admiration for the organisation, desire and fight by that Argentina showed during the match. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and while I certainly wouldn't want too many teams playing like that, as I say, it made for me a really interesting match.

But if and when you lose, lose with dignity. Absolutely shameful by some of the Argentina players after the final whistle with being so up for a literal fight, notably not Messi who while so emotional as time after the game went on, simply went round shaking Spanish hands. Then for me Messi competes with Maradona as the GOAT, a bit ahead of the Portuguese fella. Sorry Pele, you were too early even for me.

Overall I thought a very good World Cup, football won out in spite of the worst efforts of FIFA at times and the climate proved less of an issue than in last year's World Club Championship. Many dramatic late goals and great stories like Cape Verde. Also with some exceptions on the whole decently reffed and VAR also on the whole was employed well, I'd say better than often seen in England and Scotland.

Roll on Euros 2028 UK and Ireland. And World Cup 2030 Spain, Portugal and Morocco ( and err Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay for one match each ).

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Agree with all this Indy, mostly! However, argentinas approach even during the match was destructive and should have been stamped on by the referees much harder. Fernandez, Paredes, Otamendi, Morila were all thugs, particularly Enzo Fernandez and Paredes. The foul for the sending off was a terrible foul and a red in its own right and the way he stayed on the pitch and argued for 5 mins should have been stamped. Sent off? Get off.

But it was engrossing watching; and the right team won. And the World Cup was a good World Cup - a success.

Sad it is over - glad England ended in style, interested to see how we go from here.

I really hope to get to see some of Euro 28 in person (I went to England v Scotland, England v Holland - as we all called them them!- at Wembley and Spain v Bulgaria at Elland Road  back in Euro 96 and can remember those matches clearly to this day as my best football experience, indeed sporting experience. 

Var wrote:

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Pleased Spain won. Argentinas conduct showed they are bad losers. However we were bored rigid annd by normal full time had switched it off and went to bed!

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Likewise.  Timesonline has just published a cracking article by Matthew Syed (behind a firewall, but the archive site is still refusing to play ball & reproducing it in full, so I can't post a link to it which would give readers other than Times subscribers access).  The headline reads "Argentina achieved something miraculous. They united the world against them" & the sub-heading "Even the biggest enemies of the South American nation could not get within touching distance of the damage they have done to their own reputation at this World Cup".  The first two paragraphs read as follows:

If the most bitter enemies of Argentina had hired a brilliant PR company to design a campaign to traduce and poison the global public image of the country, they couldn't get within touching distance of what Argentina have done to themselves. The national football team reached a major final - nominally an achievement to inspire acclaim and joy - and brought the neutral world out against them in numbers I've rarely seen in almost three decades of sports journalism.

I received messages from relatives in the "global south", the "rich north", the Middle East and beyond, all saying precisely what I felt: "God, I hope that team of foulers and tricksters get trounced" - and that was before the team led by Saint Messi stunk the place out in the final. The only place I didn't hear from was Antarctica, although there are probably penguins who got cheesed off with the serial cynicism of the Argentinians, not to mention the sense that the referees seemed to be giving them an easy ride.

And further down:

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but smiled at the meme appearing in every corner of the world beyond Buenos Aires that Fifa stands for "Fixed it for Argentina".

Martin Samuel did a similar hatchet job in his reflections on the match as a whole which inspired 158 readers' comments, including this one:

It's about time the World Cup returned to being a football competition and not a money-grubbing, ultra-shouty showbiz event riddled with advert breaks, 'celebrities' and a pathetic half-time 'show' (I loved Rooney's pithy comment about the half-time show, as you reported Martin ["crap"], but Ally McCoist's on ITV was better - he said the show had "mentally scarred" him. Brilliant.) Worst of all was the political interference and the cringing obsequiousness of Infantino. The football wasn't that great either, apart from Cape Verde and some of the smaller countries. Argentina and the final were a disgrace.

All that said, in a separate report, Martyn Ziegler & Hamza Khalique-Loonat report as follows:

Fifa is to launch a disciplinary investigation into the violent behaviour by some Argentina players after the final whistle of their World Cup final defeat by Spain.  Disciplinary proceedings will be launched automatically into the red card issued to Leandro Paredes, and the role of other players and officials are set to be scrutinised too, according to sources.

I confess that I didn't actually watch it:  my TV was showing the ITV coverage, but with the sound muted:  I was too busy being actually entertained by catch-up programmes on iPlayer on my laptop & I'm so glad I didn't make an exception for the half-time "crap show".

On top of all that, the sad news that Kevin Keegan has died at the relatively young age of 75 (cancer).  

I do think that's way OTT by Matthew Syed on Argentina.

Maybe I'm in a huge minority, and if so then so be it. As I have indicated, personally I have a grudging admiration for much of how Argentina play, and play to win, though not the post match stuff vs England and Spain ( which FIFA should be all over, so let's see what comes of some of these initial reports ).

I suspect Jon and I were far from alone in being engrossed by the actual match and its huge contrasts. And again for me fouling is part of the game, and up to the officials to deal with appropriately ( and also they should be double red carding players not leaving the field on the first one ). I'm not signing up for no contact pretty football all the time any time soon.

Again, for me the players from the 48 nations provided a very good on the field tournament ( sorry Scotland didn't help it along a bit more ). FiFA I do have much more of an issue with.

RIP Kevin Keegan.