Spain’s elegance shows up ugly Argentina as football’s most classless losers

Just as Argentina's dream began to crumble, even Lionel Messi’s halo briefly slipped. Enzo Fernandez had just reverted to type and been sent off for acting the schoolyard bully, upending Spain’s latest teen prodigy, Pau Cubarsi. It was a clear infringement, worthy at least of the second yellow card Fernandez was shown. The Argentina midfielder had been eyeing the player, and sent him flying. It had been clear the World Cup was slipping from the holders’ grasp since, well, kick-off time around two hours earlier. They had barely touched the ball since then, not had a single shot, and Messi was still looking puzzled about how best to influence the game. Even Ted Lasso had played a more prominent role in the final, with his cameo appearance in the half-time show . As Fernandez was shown red, the rest of Argentina’s players went into attack mode. Messi at least kept his usual air of aloofness, until Marc Cucurella came over to chat to him and briefly seemed to cover his mouth. Messi snitched. It was desperate and unbecoming of the greatest of football’s men. That was the worst of it for Messi, but not so his teammates. Far from it. Fernandez’s red meant they could no longer repel Spain, who had elegantly controlled the ball and the flow of the game since its start. Ferran Torres scored the decisive goal just after the second half of extra time started, and Spain were comfortable from that point on. Which was all too much to take for Argentina. When the final whistle went, Spain’s replacement players predictably – they had just won the World Cup , after all – poured onto the field. Apparently, their joy at collectively achieving their lifetime ambition was an incitement for some of the Argentina players to attack. Rodri, the Spain captain and player of the tournament, sprinted from the bench to embrace his teammates on the field. He was intercepted by angry Argentines, who seemed to feel the captain of the new world champions was gloating. Clearly, they were judging others by their own standards. Haring onto the pitch to gloat in the faces of others was precisely what they had done a few days earlier. When Lautaro Martinez headed in the desperate late winner against England in the semi-final, Valentin Barco waded onto the field and celebrated in the faces of a number of the opposition players. It did not appear Rodri was doing anything of the sort, but it turned out there might have been a little more to the targeting of him. Once a tense peace had broken out after the melee, Nicolas Otamendi, Argentina’s replacement defender, and Rodri were caught in animated discussion. “You were crying all week,” Otamendi reportedly said to Rodri. “You and [Aymeric] Laporte, both of you. That's not right, you were crying with the referees, my friend.” Laporte had said in the Spanish press that the referee would need to be vigilant, and that they were surprised by how much Argentina had got away with till this point in the tournament. Fair enough, too. Why should only one team be able to use every advantage available to them? Sending messages via the media is hardly a new tactic for sports teams. If Spain spent the preceding press conferences intimating that Argentina’s players were going to try to leave something on them, that was less whining than a statement of fact. Slavko Vincic, the Slovenian referee who did his level best to apply a light touch during the final, did not have to be swayed by pre-match predictions about how Argentina would act. He just had to use his eyes. Leaving their mark? Lamine Yamal probably has a string of tattoos on his shins this morning, all saying: “Nicolas Tagliafico woz here.” And Gavi might now be wearing a shiner had his Spain substitutes bib not had just enough flex in it to keep him out of the punching arc of Leandro Paredes. Argentina have history for losing the plot when their World Cup is slipping away from them. In the 1990 final, when they also relied on a left-footed playmaker genius whose place among the greats was already assured, the defending champions were second best to West Germany. They, too, managed to cling on for a good while until indiscipline finally did for them. Pedro Monzon became the first player to be sent off in a World Cup final. Twenty-two minutes later, Gustavo Dezotti became the second. And the Germans took the trophy thanks to an Andreas Brehme penalty. With Fernandez’s shame against Spain, Argentina now have three of the six players to be sent off in a World Cup final. Even more recent history is a guide. After that semi-final win against England, they wielded a banner saying, “Las Malvinas son Argentinas,” meaning “the Falklands are Argentinian”. There was an outcry about that, but they were cleared by Fifa of any wrongdoing, despite the items in the governing body’s code prohibiting political messages. The incident said much. It was Argentina’s moment of triumph. Instead of reveling in the fact they were clearly miles better at football than England, they chose to bring to mind a war they had lost. It suggested that in both victory and defeat, a little bit of class was beyond them. And in the end, the trophy proved just as elusive, too.