I am not an attentive soccer (football) follower, but it was hard to ignore the 2026 FIFA World Cup being played in my own country (or at least my own continent). I tuned in for more and more games as the play progressed. Spain progressed further and further along, and finally won the gold.
This was not a one-off fluke. Spain won the World Cup in 2010, and has dominated European soccer for the past 3-4 years. Spain also won the most recent women’s World Cup in 2023. My inquiring mind naturally wanted to know what was behind this success. Spain’s population (49 million) is below that of England, France, or of Germany, so it is not simply having a huge demographic to pull from.
When this question was posted on Reddit, a Spanish fan gave this answer:
This is an interesting question with a lot of possible answers.
The most evident one is the Olympic Games of Barcelona 1992. This created a huge shockwave in Spain, which was still a little bit “isolated” from the rest of the world. The preparation of these games and their success made Spain invest a lot of money on sports infrastructure, trainers and programs, which directly impacted on the accomplishments of the big Spanish sportsmen of that generation: Rafa Nadal, Pau Gasol, Fernando Alonso, the whole Spanish football team 2008-2012 and many others. The success of the modern Spanish football team is supported by them.
But it also has a more deep and old reason. Before the 21st century the Spanish football team, even if they didnt win titles, managed to get good positions in international tournaments. Why? Spaniards have been, traditionally, smaller and weaker than the other Europeans (even if that has obviously changed). We couldn’t engage on physical play with the Dutch, Germans, French, English etc. that ran faster and were stronger than us. We don’t even have that many physical players TODAY. So, we had to rely on mentality and skill.
So the team started to become recognized by their fierce attitude, their relentless energy and attacking spirit, gaining the nickname of “La furia Roja” (red fury). And also had to rely on skill, passes, building the game from behind and being more tactical and strategical on the field. This set the foundations for the modern “tiki-taka“, the Barça and Spanish playstyle that basically created modern football. These two things, plus Barcelona ’92 were the perfect mix to create a football tradition for many years.
Poking around the AI and Wikipedia and other sources, I found that this reply did a good job summarizing the sources of Spain’s success. I will just elaborate on a few aspects here.
Certainly, the Spanish technique of rapid, relentless passing (so-called tiki-tapa) to maintain possession and to draw the opponent out of position to create scoring opportunities was in full view in this World Cup. It is more efficient and effective to rapidly move the ball than to run your players around. The specifics of this style actually puzzled me when I watched it. In my brief, undistinguished non-career in intramural soccer, I was taught to receive a pass by controlling it with typically two taps, then maybe kick it onward with a third “touch”. But the Spanish players would take an incoming pass and just whack it onward with only one “touch.” That takes exquisite control; get that wrong by just a hair on one of those dozens and dozens of taps back and forth, and there goes your possession.
The internet agrees that Spanish teams historically could not compete head-to-head physically with a team full of hulking northern Europeans, and so they deliberately came up with this alternative playing style that relied on skillful control, not brute strength or size. Another strategic decision by Spanish coaches (trusting in their team’s ball control skills to maintain possession) is to play the defenders up-field, closer to the opponent’s goal, where they can play a role in building attacking pressure.
This playing style depends heavily on teamwork, and is the style promoted through all levels of the Spanish junior/farm teams as well. The whole team operates like a hive-mind organism, with players thinking several moves ahead and trusting the others to do the right thing at the right time. Unlike some other teams, this system is not dependent on one or two superstars to carry the load. I found the Spanish play to be an inspiring facet this year of “the beautiful game.”
Economist Writing Every Day 