Lionel Scaloni admitted Spain deserved to be crowned world champions but said he could not have asked for more from his Argentina players after their 1-0 extra-time defeat in the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday (July 19, 2026).

The defending champions pushed Spain into extra-time despite playing the closing stages with 10 men after Enzo Fernandez’s stoppage-time red card, before Ferran Torres finally settled the contest.

Spain vs Argentina, FIFA World Cup final Highlights

“I feel sad,” Scaloni said. “They were better, that’s true, but I will have tremendous memories of what my players achieved. We are great in victory and must be so in defeat as well. Tonight, we showed that we know how to lose. We lost, and we accept it.”

The Argentina coach thanked the squad that had carried the nation to a second successive World Cup final after another remarkable tournament.

“Endless thanks to these players who once again took us to the final. If they give everything the way they did today, it sets a great example for the people and for our country. When you leave everything like that, it’s very hard to find fault with anything.”

Tribute to Messi

Scaloni also paid tribute to Lionel Messi, who finished what is expected to be his final World Cup with eight goals after another outstanding campaign.

“He’s 39 years old now. It was crystal clear for me that he was going to play until he decided not to,” Scaloni said. “I hope everyone feels proud of him because he’s the best football player ever to set foot on a pitch. What he did during this World Cup was incredible.”

Argentina’s Lionel Messi and coach Lionel Scaloni embrace after a World Cup
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

The 48-year-old then became visibly emotional while discussing his own future, with his contract due to expire later this year.

“I will talk to the president. I think it’s only fair that I take this time for myself,” he said. “In order to continue, you need to reset your mind. Creating a group like this again is very difficult.”

Scaloni paused, apologised to reporters and walked out of the press conference in tears, bringing an emotional end to Argentina’s reign as world champion.

The FIFA’s World Cup has increasingly become a celebration not just of football but of football as entertainment.

So, on the eve of the final, the governing body transformed the Javits Center beside the Hudson into a fan park. Hundreds queued for hours and paid between USD 60 and 80 to watch Argentina skipper Lionel Messi, coach Lionel Scaloni, Emiliano Martinez, Spain coach Luis de la Fuente and captain Rodri share a stage with Novak Djokovic, Tom Brady and Kevin Durant, who swapped their sporting greatness for the role of celebrity interviewers.

Rio Ferdinand and comedian Kevin Hart played masters of ceremony, filling the gaps with jokes and banter to ensure that the crowd felt their tickets were worthwhile.

For FIFA — which has spent this tournament monetising almost every available minute from sponsored water breaks to introducing a 30-minute halftime for Sunday’s Super Bowl-style show — it was another reminder that the World Cup has become as much about the spectacle as it is about the sport.

Messi, who skipped the official FIFA press conference upstairs where Emiliano represented Argentina, answered questions from Brady and Djokovic. The loudest laughs came when Brady brought up the famous photograph of a 20-year-old Messi bathing an infant Lamine Yamal during a Barcelona charity photoshoot.

“Lamine is truly amazing,” Messi said. “I’ve followed him a lot because he plays for a club I love so much. He has a chance to achieve something historic. We’re going to try to make sure that it doesn’t happen this time. We’ll try to put on a good match, but I hope he and his team don’t put on a good one,” the 39-year-old added with a smile.

The most memorable moment, though, came after the microphones were switched off. Scaloni walked over to de la Fuente, his former coaching instructor, and embraced him warmly. Later, the Argentina coach laughed about the unusual setting. “I told Luis that I came because of him. I came to this event because Luis was there. I respect and admire him so much.” It was a fitting line for an afternoon that felt surreal.

Messi chatted with Brady, Djokovic and Durant downstairs while, two floors above, the accredited media — many of whom had travelled almost as extensively as the finalists themselves across this World Cup — were denied the opportunity to question the captain of an Argentina side standing one victory away from becoming only the third nation to successfully defend the crown.

Some old photographs gather dust, some others gather meaning.

When Lionel Messi held a five-month-old Lamine Yamal during a charity calendar shoot around Christmas 2007, it was just another click. Nearly two decades on, it has become part of football folklore.

During Euro 2024, Yamal’s father Mounir Nasraoui shared the image with the caption: “The beginning of two legends.” What was probably a throwaway line then reads like prophecy now as the two gear up to face each other in the FIFA World Cup final.

Fans, pundits, players and coaches have all weighed in on the duo, and they all have the same opinion.

The parallels are hard to ignore. Messi scored his first World Cup goal when he was 18, wearing the No. 19 shirt. Twenty years later, Yamal did the same, at the same age and with the same jersey number! He is Barcelona’s youngest debutant and also the youngest goalscorer, breaking records that once belonged to Messi. The list goes on and on.

“For me, Messi is the greatest football player in history. He is a legend and I do not find myself worthy of being compared to him. I do not want to be Messi, and he knows it. I want to follow my own path,” Yamal once said.

Even so, it’s hard to miss how closely the teenager is tracing the trail Messi laid down, and doing it better than others who were hastily crowned the Argentine magician’s successor.

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Messi, now 39, is chasing one more piece of history, trying to make Argentina the first team since Brazil in 1962 to defend the World Cup. Up against him will be the 19-year-old Yamal, the face of a Spanish side hoping to lift the trophy for only the second time.

Spain once tried hard to convince Messi to play for La Roja, back when La Albiceleste was slow to notice him. That push peaked before the 2003 Under-17 World Cup where the Spaniards, featuring Messi’s La Masia teammate Cesc Fabregas, defeated the Argentines 3-2 in the semifinal. Fabregas netted a brace, including the match-winner. Jose Pekerman, the Argentine coach, revealed that the Spanish players during the post-match handshake told him: “If you had this kid (Messi), you would have been the champions.”

Messi, however, stayed loyal to Argentina, leaving behind the old question of what Spain might have looked like with him in the line-up. That fantasy will never play out. But in Yamal, Spain may have found something close to it.

The stage is now set for a generational showdown. One gladiator walks onto football’s grandest spectacle for the first time. The other, probably, for his last dance. Between them sits two decades, a stack of broken records and a photograph that has come to signify how destiny always plays a role in football.

The beautiful game brings these two together in the same frame once again, not as legend and heir but as opponents battling for the ultimate prize.

Lionel Scaloni had barely sat down before he admitted the obvious.

Argentina had put its supporters through unnecessary “suffering”. Yet the manager was in no mood to apologise for the chaos. What he had witnessed, he felt, was something larger than a comeback win over Egypt, larger even than qualification. It was proof of the sort of team Argentina is, a side which never gives up.

“We made our people suffer even though we didn’t play a bad game,” Scaloni said after the 3-2 victory. “I am a coach for moments like this. The calibre of what we saw goes beyond just going through (to the quarterfinals). We would have been out if we didn’t fight.”

Scaloni insisted that Argentina had not been as poor as the scoreline at one stage suggested. Egypt, he acknowledged, was “an excellent team” that converted its openings well, but he pointed to the opportunities his own side had created long before the late surge. “We had three or four clear chances and if we had scored, nobody would talk about it. We had to dig in.”

Even when Argentina fell two goals behind, the chief coach never felt that the game had escaped it completely. “You feel concerned when you are not in control, but today we were. I saw the game going our way as we created chances.” It was, in effect, an argument that Argentina’s tough times came not from inferiority but from wastefulness.

The emotional centre of Scaloni’s night was Lionel Messi. The captain failed to convert a penalty and looked, for a while, like the tragic figure in Argentina’s elimination story. But he then became one of the authors of its rescue. “Messi is a role model for all the players,” Scaloni said. “He missed a penalty, but he still asks for the ball and goes on and on.”

He stopped short of placing the “epic” night alongside the World Cup final in Qatar but suggested that it belonged to the same emotional universe. Messi, he said, “lives football for moments like this”, and Argentina wanted him to keep enjoying them while he still could.

But Scaloni was careful not to let the story become only about him or his captain. “It’s useless to say we win because of my actions. We have these great players, and you use them when you need them. That’s not genius. The players are making the difference”.

Both Argentina and Egypt needed 120 draining minutes to survive their opening knockout ties and had barely four days to recover before meeting for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals.

For Argentina, that short turnaround has come with a little more anxiety after Lionel Scaloni’s side, so smooth through the group stage, came within minutes of a seismic upset before edging Cabo Verde 3-2 after extra-time. Egypt, meanwhile, is here after beating Australia 4-2 (1-1 after extra-time) on penalties.

Scaloni did not hide his frustration with the scheduling after the win in Miami. “Now to rest. I don’t know how the World Cup is made but we had six days, and now we have three and a half. When you need the rest the most, you have the least.”

The holders looked vulnerable for the first time against Cabo Verde, unable to control the game as they had in the group stage and was repeatedly exposed in transition, even though Lionel Messi still found time to score his 20th World Cup goal.

The Latin American team’s discomfort with physicality will encourage Hossam Hassan’s Egypt, which has been built on defensive discipline and quick breaks through Mohamed Salah and Omar Marmoush.

“We aren’t focusing on Messi,” assistant coach Ibrahim Hassan said. “They might have Messi, but we have Mohamed Salah, and we have 26 Messis of our own.”

The tactical contrast is clear. Argentina will try to reassert midfield control and might bring in Leandro Paredes to bolster the inner channels and support Enzo Fernandez and Alexis Mac Allister.

Egypt will sit in a compact block and wait for moments to release Salah and Marmoush into the spaces, following the blueprint Cabo Verde found. Ahmed El Fotouh, Karim Hafez and Mohamed Abdelmonem are racing against time to recover from knocks, while Argentina might bring back Nicolas Tagliafico to the left side of the defence ahead of Facundo Medina.

Scaloni is expected to keep faith with the same core, but after 120 exhausting minutes, Atlanta may reveal whether Friday was merely a stumble or the first real crack in the champions’ defence.

Match starts at 9.30 p.m. IST

Lionel Scaloni has changed little so far at this World Cup. Between Argentina’s first two matches, the coach made only one alteration to his starting lineup, preferring continuity as the defending champion moved into the knockout rounds.

But after wins over Algeria and Austria, Scaloni’s challenge now is about protecting legs and giving minutes to the rest of his squad while still carrying the momentum into the knockouts as his team takes on Jordan in its final Group J game on Sunday (June 28, 2026) morning India time.

“The idea is to give most players a chance to play. I think they deserve it and, whenever the match allows it, we will do so,” Scaloni said.

The main question, inevitably, concerns Lionel Messi. The Argentina captain, who turned 39 on Wednesday, has scored all five of his team’s goals in the tournament so far.

Having recently recovered from a muscle strain, Messi could be rested, with Como’s Nico Paz among those in line to step up. Julian Alvarez could also be given a start alongside Lautaro Martinez in attack.

Giuliano Simeone is another who may come into the side on the right, while Thiago Almada could retain his place on the left. In midfield, Leandro Paredes and Exequiel Palacios are options to give Enzo Fernandez and Alexis Mac Allister a breather.

There could be changes in defence as well. Cristian Romero suffered a knee injury against Austria and, although he has played down concerns, Argentina is unlikely to take unnecessary risks.

Nicolas Otamendi could replace him, while Marcos Senesi may come in to give Lisandro Martinez a rest. The full backs may remain unchanged to offer stability, with Emiliano Martinez expected to continue in goal.

Jordan, meanwhile, has little choice but to suffer without the ball. Jamal Sellami’s side is expected to sit deep in a back three, stay compact and try to frustrate Argentina for as long as it can. Its best route forward will be through quick counters, with Mousa Al-Tamari the obvious outlet.

Trading blows with Argentina, even a rotated Argentina, is not an option.

The world champion will dominate possession regardless of Scaloni’s starting XI. But it remains to be seen how quickly its reshuffled attack can find a way through Jordan’s low block.

Thousands of supporters from the Jordanian diaspora are expected in Dallas, turning an otherwise routine group-stage fixture into another vibrant evening of colour and noise. Sharing a pitch with the reigning world champion and arguably football’s greatest player will be a landmark moment for a nation making its first appearance in a World Cup.

For Argentina, however, sentiments can wait. The knockout rounds begin soon, where every mistake becomes irreversible. Saturday offers one final opportunity to sharpen combinations, protect players and perhaps allow Messi to add another record before the tournament truly starts.