Teams
On the back of their win two years ago in the European Championships, Spain are one of the favourites to lift only their second World Cup following success in 2010, but their recent outings on the world stage has not quite gone to plan. In their last two World Cups, Spain were knocked out at the Round of 16 stage, most recently by Morocco, and prior to that Russia. Prior to that, they didn’t even get out of the group stages, and the pressure is on to achieve better results. They made very easy work of their qualification campaign, winning every game up to the final fixture when they had already qualified. One thing is for sure, they will not want to go to a penalty shootout - they have lost 4 of their last 5 penalty shootouts in the World Cup, as well as the final of the UEFA Nations League against rivals Portugal.
Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal turns 19 years old a week before the World Cup final, and going into the tournament, he already has 25 caps for his country. In fact, he is the youngest capped player for Spain having made his debut at the age of 16 years of 57 days and its tough to see him not become Spain’s highest goalscorer in history come the end of his career. He has been having the best season of his short career so far too - he has already scored more goals than the previous two seasons combined in La Liga, and particularly after the incredible goal he scored against France in EURO 2024, all eyes will be on him to spark Spain’s front line into attack.