Some of the sporting event sequences unfold in fairly interchangeable sequences. Spain’s 2-0 victory over France in Tuesday’s first semi-final of the expanded World Cup was like an elegant dissection of abstraction, full of quiet sincerity and tireless determination.On the surface, the challenge of facing France does look like a puzzle, too daunting and dizzyingly abstract for any team to solve. They were a team to beat, an offensive juggernaut that steamrolled one opponent after another with utter disdain. The stage is clearly set for Didier Deschamps and Kylian Mbappe’s Azzurri to embrace immortality. However, this was ultimately only a possibility, because the arrival of Spain injected into this very French idea of rule a huge contradiction that was irresistible to their own sense of La Furia.Extraordinarily mediocre France met its match in extraordinarily beautiful Spain. A Frenchman walked into the examination room with the air of a top student, and suddenly looked more and more confused. And Spain, perhaps a little detached from the pre-match chaos, was ecstatic to have passed the test flawlessly.The arc of the flipped narrative is essentially set in motion through Johan Cruyff’s book, which is deeply woven into the soul of Spanish football. This is victory depicted with a triangle.Cruyff’s obsession with possession led him to develop a model based on the triangle. Regardless of his position on the pitch, a player must maintain his position to constantly create geometry that allows him to provide his teammates with more than one passing option. “It’s not the man with the ball who decides where it goes, it’s the player without it,” the Dutch legend – the focus of Rinus Michels’ Total Football – once said.Cruyff came to Catalonia first as a player and then as coach of FC Barcelona, an idea that sprinkled stardust in Spanish football’s thinking space and went on to form his “Dream Team” project. It has since changed hands again – from Pep Guardiola to Vicente del Bosque, then Luis Enrique and now Luis de la Fuente. The triumph of geometry has since become Spain’s calling card. It sparked debate, entertained and even annoyed audiences, but was never abandoned. France, who entered as overwhelming favorites, may have played their worst game at the worst moment of the tournament, but they couldn’t have faced a superior Spanish side at a more inopportune time. Mbappe and his entourage were outplayed in every aspect of the game and there’s nothing really to complain about for 2018 World Cup-winning coach Didier Deschamps.Facing Spain’s masterclass game with Euclidean geometry, Mbappe fell into a stagnant space throughout the game, and his elegant speed seemed to be sucked into a black hole and into the surrounding void.Everything seemed to be on track for Spain, with Lamine Yamar winning a penalty after a foul on French defender Lucas Digne and Mikel Oyarzabal finishing perfectly on the spot to become the third Spanish player to score five goals in a single World Cup after David Villa (2010) and Emilio Butragueno (1986).However, it was the second goal that filled the team’s tiki-taka theater with magic and mystery. It was the result of an attack by goalkeeper Unai Simon that ended with Dani Olmo unleashing Pedro Porro with a gorgeous pass that the French full-back controlled and finished with the confidence of a No.9.Will Spain get tired of its own style?Of course, it has its dark depths and sometimes feels like a burden in itself. Who can forget how this system reached a stifling dead end during the 2018 World Cup, leading to a shocking last-16 elimination by Russia with 74% possession. The pain was repeated four years later when Spain lost to Morocco on penalties in another knockout round.After Spain lost to Morocco in Qatar, the Spanish Football Federation replaced head coach Luis Enrique with De la Fuente, who was in charge of the Under-21 team. De la Fuente spent many years in the country’s youth system, inheriting the overwhelming characteristics of a team that was easiest to analyze but always hardest to beat and injecting it with a winner’s mentality.Sometimes art doesn’t have to defeat anyone. This is when the game elevates itself and transcends the results.
