AND SO IT was in Germany that football’s worship of efficiency died.
Since 2016, international football has been defined by Didier Deschamps’ grimly successful France, whose determination to do Just Enough was summed by Deschamps from the moment he took the French job: “For me, pleasure can only exist in success.”
There is nothing gratuitous, nothing excessive, nothing solely joyful about France. And it can be said to have been a worthy doctrine, given France have made the final in three of the five previous tournaments they have played under Deschamps. It has also bled into those who most envy their success: this is why Euro 2024 has been tarnished by a queasy feeling that France and England were fated to meet in the final; the two teams who have made their swingeing cuts under the cloak of supposed efficiency and thus are too big to fail.
But Spain have shown there is another way; that pleasure can beget success.
They have qualified for the final because they prioritised technical quality over crude ball-winning in midfield; because they have placed the greater trust in youth; and because they calculated that the best means of winning is to attack.
Hence they sashay onto Berlin, scoring the goals to force a muddled, curbed French team emerge from the foetal position. As soon as they tried to stand up, they fell flat on their face.
Spain’s victory is all the more impressive for being forged in the smithy of difficulty.
The problem area was obvious ahead of the game as, with Dani Carvajal suspended, Spain took a punt on 38-year-old Jesus Navas at right-back. Not only is Navas old enough to be Lamine Yamal’s Dad, he’s older than Lamine Yamal’s actual Dad.
Thirteen minutes later, Navas had been booked, had watched Mbappe create the opening goal, and the big screen had displayed its first Brooding Carvajal Close-Up.
Mbappe, meanwhile, had cast off his protective mask and was liberated as a result. It felt in the early stages here that Mbappe completed the true comic book arc; the one not even the Marvel Cinematic Universe have reached: the point at which a country no longer needed a masked hero.
Mbappe’s Euros has been low on goals but rich in valour. He has played through the pain barrier on the pitch and led his team-mates’ thwarting of Marine Le Pen’s far-right off it.And tonight he found the time to play in this era of Liberté, Egalité, Mbappé.
First he darted in behind to seduce Navas into dropping off, keeping him onside as he took a switch of play. Navas wasted precious time in appealing lamely for a handball, by which point Mbappe had killed the ball and pulled a gorgeous cross to the back post for Randal Kolo Muani to head in France’s first open-play goal of the tournament.
With less than a quarter-hour played, it seemed Mbappe was leading Navas a merry dance that would end on Calvary.
But Spain solved the Navas problem by deciding attack was the best form of defence. Spain’s means of playing a 4-3-3 is like playing a sliding jigsaw: the pieces move in quick-fire rhythm and there’s always space somewhere. Yamal and Nico Williams played more narrowly than normal, darting in-field to drag a full-back with them, in turn creating space for the Spanish full-backs, exploiting Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele’s exquisite disinterest in chasing back. And so when French midfielders Rabiot and Tchouameni shuttled to the wings to quench these fires, Fabian Ruiz and Dani Olmo were freed.
The French midfield, picked solely for their destructive qualities, were bedraggled. Adrien Rabiot shambled about wide-eyed and haunted, looking like a barista going straight from Workman’s to work in the pale morning sun.
But previous Spanish teams have carouseled teams off the pitch in the past: the difference is this edition is willing to thrust a lance.
This Spain are more direct, more decisive. Prior to this tournament they hadn’t scored a goal from outside the box at this tournament since Euro 2000. Now they’ve scored two of them in Germany with the final still to come.
With Yamal narrowed and within shooting range, he was encouraged to uncork the special stuff. First he jinked by Theo Hernandez and then the hapless Rabiot before curling in an outrageous curling effort that kissed the post on its way in.
As Yamal’s braces glinted beneath the spotlight, everyone in the stadium couldn’t help recalling with a shudder whatever lame thing they were doing the week they turned 17. Yamal is the youngest goalscorer in the history of the Euros and tonight became the night his superstardom stopped being a thing for the future tense.
Spain have also shucked off Pedri’s absence thanks to another player who trades in decisiveness, and it was Dani Olmo’s liquid-quick touch and shot in the French box that cannoned off Jules Kounde and into the net to complete the Spanish turnaround.
Kounde spent the aftermath roaring furiously at Mbappe, for allowing Navas escape unhindered down the right to put the ball into the box in the first place.
The trade-off with this Spanish team is that they are willing to cede possession in games when they are ahead – a more logical version of England’s determination to do it whenever they are not behind – but this was a nightmare situation for France, whose trio of midfield piano-carriers were now asked to sit down and play a tune.
One lamentable moment just after half-time summed it up. Rabiot took the ball in space in midfield, but sallied out to the wing to make sure he was under less pressure to play a pass to Mbappe. In doing so, he dribbled the ball out of play. Wah-wah-wahhhh.
Rabiot, Kante, and Kolo Muani were sacrificed as Deschamps sought to try and score a goal, with Bradley Barcola, Eduardo Camavinga and Antoine Griezmann introduced. But France continued to rely on a series of flighty individual interventions: Barcola showed a Yamalesque ability to run at his full-back, while Mbappe’s moment came late in the game, skating in-field under meagre pressure only to skew his shot over the crossbar.
Deschamps eventually threw on Olivier Giroud but France couldn’t get enough possession to hoik a few crosses onto the great man’s forehead, instead he ended up lumbering onto a few hopeful balls over the top. In the desperate endgame, the French formation was a dysfunction of parliamentary proportions.
The extent to which Spain are conducted by their midfield became a little on the nose as the game clicked into stoppage time: in between passes, Rodri looked to his manager and signalled for a substitution. Lamal and Williams were withdrawn for fresh legs a couple of minutes later.
They did not end the game under pressure but holding possession by one of the French corner flags, Yamal and Williams typically exuberant in trying to hold themselves back from running on in celebration. The whistle quickly came, and it felt we had witnessed something greater than Spanish victory.
It’s on nights like these the international game can tilt.
