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Root for Spain for Their Play and Their Politics

A World Cup victory will not just feel like a soccer triumph but a national triumph. For that reason, fans should support Pedro Sánchez’s Spain over Javier Milei’s Argentina.

The flags of Spain and Argentina are displayed against the Manhattan skyline during the FIFA drone show on July 15, 2026, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The World Cup is politics by other means. Not even Olympic competition imbues a game with politics quite like the World Cup. This is not only because—to state the obvious—that it’s a tournament that pits country against country and where tensions and hostilities play themselves out on the pitch. It’s that the whole world is watching. In an age of polyculture, when our focus is divided into a million pieces, each piece competing for slivers of our time, nothing unites the world’s eyeballs like the World Cup. This makes it political. Every nation—and every world leader—knows that victory will feel not only like a soccer triumph but a national triumph. Winning the World Cup gooses the political commodity in the shortest supply in 2026: hope.

Even by World Cup standards, this year’s final is especially fraught with politics. We have the defending champion, Argentina, led by Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest player to ever take the pitch. And we have a team from Spain that plays a more beautiful game—a team approach consisting of quick passes, impenetrable defense, and blinding speed. They are opposites. Everything Argentina does is aimed at freeing up, creating space, and physically protecting the 39-year-old Messi. Everything Spain does is about involving all 11 players, its whole greater than the sum........

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