Spain at its best takes the ball from Trump

At this point in the game, we’re not going to apologize for mixing politics with sport. As in other cases, the success of the Spanish team represents a defeat for nationalism and a victory for multiculturalism. The country that Trump most detests has won the World Cup, right under his nose, with a narrative that’s the very antithesis of Trumpism. In World Cup matches, the singing of national hymns is followed by a post-national confrontation where the teams take on the color of a secular project.

"Spain’s national teams, both women’s and men’s – federal, multicultural, plural, and diverse – are now the reigning world champions of football, the most successful and globalized of sports"

With their distinctive jerseys, Spain’s national teams, both women’s and men’s – federal, multicultural, plural, and diverse – are now the reigning world champions of football, the most successful and globalized of sports. They are also Europe’s Under-19 champions, female as well as male. And we can’t say we didn't see it coming, because those successes are nothing new but have been building for a long time. Unlike its infrastructures, Spain isn’t centralized or 'radial' as a sporting phenomenon – the periphery is well represented and even shares the lead role, with a solid presence of athletes from immigrant families, or with several nationalities, and not only of Latin American origin (which the stereotype integrates more easily, thanks to a shared language and religion). And then there are the emigrant footballers who have travelled outside Spain to further their training. Thanks to the institutional rule of belonging to only one national team, players can bring back to their country of origin (or the one they’ve chosen to call home) everything they’ve learned in competition abroad. And thanks to the institutions of the European Union and the sector in which these athletes work, they are less discriminated against than their Spanish ancestors who migrated to Germany or Switzerland. Then there are players like Oyarzábal who don’t move abroad but exercise their right to stay (and to not get tattooed, or shout or act out, or grab the spotlight).

The team that just won the World Cup is a vibrant example of the best that we can be. Mikel Merino’s goal against Portugal or Pedro Porro’s scores against France and Austria (the latter preceded by a handball play) illustrate the essence of 'tiki-taka' – that mix of hard work and improvisation where those who maneuver the ball around the net are just as important as the players who don’t touch it but who are just where they need to be (like Lamine and Cucurella, clearing the field for Merino’s score), or who move very slightly to open a gap (like Oyarzábal in Porro’s second goal). The player who appears in the photo is equal in importance to those who don’t. As Thierry Henry put it, the game doesn’t depend on names; any 9-year-old Spanish child knows exactly what he or she needs to do on a football pitch, ever since the arrival of Johan Cruyff and successive mutations of the ‘positional game’ through the evolutionary mechanism of trial-and-error.

Spain’s national team makes Al Pacino’s maxim on American football (in his motivational speech as a coach in 'Any Given Sunday') a reality in European football: "We’re either going to win as a team, or we’ll die as individuals". That’s a simple lesson that Kylian Mbappé (so exemplary in other ways) and his coaches are reluctant to learn, and it’s why they continue to win Pichichis but sink their teams.

Trump and his ally Infantino represent values in opposition to Spain’s patient and collective game. In their world of impatience, the rules are merely decorative set-dressing for populism and corruption (so present in football at every level), where the well-being of the oligarchy is all that matters.

But let’s not get our hopes up, because in the past we in Spain have sometimes mixed success with comments like "negro de mierda," and the memory of Rubiales is not so distant. Today we have Borja and Lamine to put Rajoy in his place, but that doesn’t mean that all our football heroes have read the book ‘España diversa’ by Eduardo Manzano. The success and notoriety of football will always attract corrupt and opportunistic people.

The Spain of Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Rosalía stands behind the goals scored by Oyarzábal, Ferran, and Merino. So does the Europe of social democracy of which we’re part, where you don’t have to be rich or a native-born child to have a sports facility nearby, as Simon Kuper – the best sports journalist (and journalist, period) – has explained in his columns in the Financial Times.

"The Spain that George Orwell, Willy Brandt, and Albert Hirschman came to defend isn’t yet a reality, but its nearness can be felt in today’s multiracial, multilingual, hard-working, and outstanding group"

In Europe, modern football has found its best ecosystem: a vast market complemented by government at every level and by regulatory institutions from the Bosman ruling to the membership rules for every national team. The Spain that George Orwell, Willy Brandt, and Albert Hirschman came to defend isn’t yet a reality, but its nearness can be felt in today’s multiracial, multilingual, hard-working, and outstanding group. The Spain of the 'Institución Libre de Enseñanza' that nurtured Dalí and Lorca – combining art and method – has also spread its spirit to the stadiums of North America, just as Juan Diego Botto, a Spaniard of Argentine origin, brings that spirit into our theaters.

For once, careful planning and patience is in clear evidence. I was wrong about De La Fuente, like so many of us were. He may not be brilliant and emphatic like Luis Enrique, and he’s not left-wing like Borja Iglesias – nor was he especially quick to distance himself from Rubiales – but he’s a serious person who has minimized the usual mistakes and who remains undistracted by Twitch. The role of the coach isn’t the most important thing, but it does matter that he keeps mistakes to a minimum.

Chance also matters, and you have to bear that in mind: things could have turned out otherwise. The fact that Spain was given a 53% chance of beating Argentina means that out of 100 games, Argentina might have won 47. But reaching that 53 has been a labor of years. The same goes for penalties, those great unknowns: the commentators haven’t yet learned that players (especially great players) tend to shoot randomly, because that’s the only way to be unpredictable. Which doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll score, because the goalkeepers do the same (regardless of what the goal coach tells them) – which is one reason why a quarter of penalty kicks miss the mark. Those are all just numbers, but in modern football, poetry and science are compatible, which is a good thing. No one wants to ‘reduce’ football to bunch of numbers or to take Valdano’s place as the top 'rhapsodist'.

"A free, egalitarian, plural, and diverse Spain is indeed possible, but it won’t happen automatically"

Spain is a success story not just in football, but also in gastronomy, life expectancy, and freedom. Not freedom for the rich to do whatever they want, but freedom for every girl and boy in any neighborhood and village in Spain (such as Rocafonda, barrio of Lamine Yamal, or Don Benito, pueblo of Pedro Porro) to make their dreams come true, and to be educated and have available all the means to prosper. Of course, it would be ideal if they had better schools, in addition to football pitches. Freedom is sharing in order to thrive and prospering in order to share.

The fact that Spain projects these values through football doesn’t mean that they’ll be easily transferred to other areas. But it does point to that possibility. A free, egalitarian, plural, and diverse Spain is indeed possible, but it won’t happen automatically. The best counterexample, where outstanding football doesn’t correspond to success in other fields, is Argentina itself, where the emigrant players are numerous, with several whole generations having moved to Europe. In other times, migratory movements worked the other way around (which is why Argentina’s players often have Italian, Spanish, or British surnames). What the future holds remains unknown. Today, Argentina has Scaloni (who resides in Spain) on the bench, but it also has Milei in the government, brandishing his chainsaw and his memory-eraser. Argentina’s top star came to Spain at age 13 and has never since resided in his birth country. And yet Milei fans proliferate in Spain, led by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the influential president of the Comunidad de Madrid.

Tomorrow we’ll stop talking about transcendent Spain and return to topics like the dead people left in the streets by Trump’s ICE, or Trump’s intimidation of journalists, his large-scale corruption, his useless wars, his support for genocides, and his attempts to manipulate the next round of U.S. elections (if the citizens allow it). Let’s exercise our right to remember that another world is possible, plus our right to proclaim that Europe needs to set an example not only in football, but in making its promise of equality, democracy, and freedom a uniform reality.