The final match of the Football World Cup will be played late tonight between Spain and Argentina.
This will be the 23rd final in the 96-year history of the tournament. For the 12th time, the final match will be between a team from Europe and Latin America. Before this, in the 11 finals played between teams from these two continents, Latin American teams won the title 8 times. European teams could only win the title 3 times.
Another aspect of history is in Argentina's favour. Before this, 11 World Cups were held outside Europe. Out of these, Latin American teams became champions 9 times. European teams could only win the title twice. However, this does not weaken Spain's claim. Spain is one of the two European teams that won the World Cup outside Europe. Spain won the title in the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa.
1. World Cup trophy divided between only two continents
In the 22 World Cups played from 1930 to 2022, only teams from Europe and Latin America have become champions. Europe has won 12 titles with the strength of five countries, and Latin America has won 10 titles with the strength of three countries. This means that in 96 years, no Asian, African, or North American team has been able to become a World Champion.
2. World Cup outside Europe... Latin America's dominance
So far, 11 World Cups have been held outside Europe. Of these, Latin American teams have been champions 9 times, and European teams only 2 times. Spain (2010) and Germany (2014) are the only European teams that have won titles in World Cups held outside Europe.
3. Argentina has a chance to repeat a 64-year-old record
Argentina is just one step away from winning the World Cup for the second consecutive time. The team won its third World Cup in Qatar in 2022. If they succeed in defending the title by defeating Spain in New Jersey, they will become the first team since 1962 to win two consecutive World Cups.
So far, only two countries have successfully defended their World Cup titles. Italy won the trophy twice consecutively in 1934 and 1938, while Brazil did so in 1958 and 1962.
4. Spain won its first World Cup outside Europe
Spain won its only World Cup in 2010 in South Africa. Now, it has the opportunity to win a second trophy and challenge Latin America's long dominance on non-European soil.
Spain's World Cup journey has been full of ups and downs. After the 2010 title, the team could not advance beyond the knockout stage in 2014, 2018, and 2022. Meanwhile, Argentina has played in three semifinals and two finals in the last four World Cups.
5. Whose favor are the final statistics in?
In World Cup history, teams from Europe and Latin America have faced each other 11 times in the final. Of these, Latin America has won 8 times and Europe has won 3 times.
Germany is the team that has played the most finals (8), but the most successful team is Brazil, which has won the trophy five times in seven finals. As soon as Argentina plays the 2026 final, it will enter the title match for the seventh time.
The World Cup final offers football's grandest stage a deliciously odd pairing: Argentina, all pulse, fire and Lionel Messi, against Spain, the European champions who appear to treat chaos as an administrative error and have turned control into something close to an art form.
It is South America v Europe, passion v precision, a match threaded with curious personal history, from the touchline to La Masia, where Barcelona's greatest graduate, Messi, will face teenager Lamine Yamal, the academy's dazzling young heir.
Argentina are back in the final four years after their cathartic triumph in Qatar, when Messi finally lifted the trophy in a breathless win over France.
Back then, with Messi aged 35, another World Cup final seemed fanciful.
Now 39, he is still bending time, defenders and probability.
Argentina's campaign has been less a smooth title defence than a pilgrimage through suffering.
With 17 members of their 26-man squad having been part of the 2022 triumph, Lionel Scaloni's side have reached the final the hard way: beating Cape Verde in extra time and surviving nerve-shredding clashes with Egypt, Switzerland and England.
They have played at times like a team with their hearts on the toe of their boots, powered by Messi's goals, assists and flashes of sorcery.
Each intervention has added another page to the never-ending argument over whether he or Brazilian Pele is the greatest footballer in history.
Unbeaten in 37 matches, Spain can win their second World Cup, after 2010, and break the international unbeaten record set by Italy between 2018 and 2021.
They arrived in North America as the bookmakers' favourites after winning the European Championship and have largely carried themselves like a side that sees pressure not as danger, but as a meeting already scheduled.
Their route has seemed carefully mapped, as if everything before the semi-final was part of the warm-up.
Under Luis de la Fuente, who has coached many of the squad since their teenage years in Spain's youth system, they have developed a level of collective understanding that can make opponents feel trapped in a beautifully lit room with no doors.
Wild invention
Spain's passing and positional play can suffocate, but within the machinery there is wild invention too, and most of it comes from Lamine.
The winger, who enchanted the European Championship as a 16-year-old, has spent his short career shredding age records and expectations.
Since making his Barcelona debut at 15, he has invited comparisons with the most famous product of La Masia — the man facing him on Sunday.
Messi and Lamine are also linked by one of football's strangest viral images: Messi, as a young Barcelona player, pictured bathing baby Lamine.
The final may also be shaped by the conditions.
The New Jersey pitch has not been kind to possession teams, with coaches and players complaining about its quality during the tournament.
That could complicate Spain's rhythm and invite Argentina into the kind of broken, emotional contest they relish.
The weather may add another layer of intrigue.
A hot and humid day is expected, with temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius, and it will be only Spain's second match in an open-air stadium at this World Cup.
Wildfire smoke from Canada has also blanketed parts of the US Midwest and Northeast with hazardous air, raising concerns with more than 80,000 fans expected at the final.
For Spain, the task is to keep the match clean, controlled and played to their patterns.
For Argentina, it is to turn discomfort into theatre one more time.
At the centre of it all stands Messi, trying to ensure that what could be his last World Cup match ends not as a farewell, but as one final act of mastery.
END/AGENCIES/ASA
