Spain wins World Cup after Ferran Torres’ late goal defeats Lionel Messi’s Argentina

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – After years of planning, months of training, weeks of playing and days of game-planning, the largest, loudest and most scrutinized World Cup ever staged came down to the final minutes.

Ferran Torres, Spain’s flashy 26-year-old forward, put the ball high into the net in the 106th minute of Sunday’s World Cup final, breaking a scoreless tie and sending all of Spain into delirium.

And with that, a tournament that began as a grand experiment across three countries ended with a finish worthy of all its sprawl: Spain beating Argentina, 1-0, in extra time to win its first World Cup title since 2010 and deny Lionel Messi one more implausible addition to his legend.

Spain’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, called Sunday’s win and his team’s unflinching march through the tournament as “something historic, something unique.”

“Today we were convinced that this was our final,” he said.

When the final whistle sounded, Spain’s players spilled across the grass, a new generation in red having interrupted one of the most enchanted late-career stories soccer has ever seen. To get here, La Roja masterfully navigated the biggest, most complicated World Cup the sport has seen, bouncing across a continent, slaying the game’s giants and adding both theatrics and closure to a tournament that was never short on drama.

The World Cup around them had arrived with questions attached to every border crossing and kickoff: more teams, more games, more miles, more heat, more security demands, more politics. There were immigration debates, geopolitical tensions, concerns about midsummer temperatures and the persistent question of whether a World Cup stretched across an entire continent could still feel like a World Cup rather than a logistical nightmare.

Somehow, North America pulled it off. By the final weekend, attendance for the expanded tournament had topped 6.7 million, surpassing the combined total of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and nearly doubling the previous single-tournament record set at the 1994 edition in the United States.

For Messi and Argentina, Sunday’s loss closed off a historic possibility. Messi had been trying to stretch his final act into something beyond even his own standards – a second straight title, four years after he had lifted the trophy in Qatar. Across six weeks, he had played the part of a grand conductor: walking, scanning, waiting and then summoning the game to him at precisely the moment Argentina needed him.

But that moment never came Sunday. Argentina, trying to become the first country since Brazil in 1962 to defend its World Cup title, spent most of day struggling to mount an attack and never threatened the Spanish goal. The defending champions went the entire match without taking a serious shot on goal – the longest such drought the country had ever endured in a World Cup match.

Spain’s chances came in waves then – corner kicks, crosses, headers, loose balls skittering across the area – equal parts nail-biting and breathtaking. Again and again, Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez batted them away or swallowed them whole. He ended the match with 11 saves, a record for a World Cup final.

Finally, three minutes into extra time, the match seemed to finally crack open. Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernández sent Pau Cubarsí flipping head over heels and was shown a red card, forcing Argentina to play the rest of the final a man down. A match that had been slow and methodical suddenly became urgent and uneven.

“I would have loved to know what would’ve happened if we still had 11 men on the pitch,” Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said after the game.

Spain nearly pulled ahead early in the extra period, when Nico Williams rolled a shot into the net. But it was quickly waved off for a foul, and Argentina survived yet another scare.

Then, in the opening minute of the second extra period, a well-placed Williams header inside the box found Torres’s left foot, and for once, Martínez had no chance. After knocking it in from eight yards out, Torres, who came off the bench in the second half for Spain, immediately zipped across the field, celebrating a shot his country will replay on loop for years to come.

“He will make it into history,” said de la Fuente. “He has already made history, and he deserves it.”

It was the fitting final note on both the game and the tournament. By the time Argentina and Spain reached Match No. 104, the World Cup had moved from the highways and airports of North America to the streets of New York. Over the weekend, Times Square and the surrounding blocks filled with the bright red of Spain and the light blue of Argentina, a rolling soccer party that finally made its way across the Hudson and through the long security lines in New Jersey.

The final brought American spectacle, too: Post Malone performed before the game, and a halftime show featuring Madonna, Shakira, BTS and Justin Bieber gave the day a Super Bowl sheen. President Donald Trump attended his first World Cup match of the tournament, taking part in the trophy ceremony. He’d already stirred plenty of controversy at this World Cup by pressing FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review an American red card earlier in the tournament.

After distributing medals to the players, Trump and Infantino together presented the World Cup trophy to Spain. They passed off the shiny hardware, and Trump briefly stationed himself alongside the team, looking ahead at the photographers in front of him. Infantino then appeared to gently usher Trump off the stage.

Not far away, Messi was welling up on the pitch shortly after receiving his runner-up medal, staring up into a sea of fans clad in white and light blue. The tournament could mark the last time the soccer world sees the 39-year old Argentine legend on this stage, but Spain’s triumph also carried the feel of a torch being passed. It was the first World Cup title for Lamine Yamal, the 19-year-old prodigy already carrying heaps of talent and expectations, young enough to have grown up watching Messi highlights and precocious enough to help deny him one last trophy.

“I hope that everyone feels proud of him, of what he’s achieved because he’s the best football player to ever set foot on a pitch,” Scaloni said of Messi, whose eight World Cup goals were the second only to France’s Kylian Mbappé, the Golden Boot winner. “I have no doubts about this. What he’s done in this World Cup is incredible.”

Spain swept the tournament’s other individual honors. Rodri won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s top player, Unai Simon won the Golden Glove as the top goalkeeper and Cubarsi was named the best young player.

It was a fittingly crowded ending for a tournament that had always seemed to have too much happening at once: politics and pop spectacle, old legends and new heirs, commercial excess and genuine sporting wonder, all competing for space around the same patch of grass.

Yet the field remained the center of gravity. That was the trick of this World Cup. It was too big, too complicated and too commercial to be romanticized too easily. But again and again, it found its way back to the simplest things the sport has to offer.