World Cup: Triangles, tactical nuances and La Roja’s path to the final

Spain’s Pedro Porro scores his second goal against France goalkeeper Mike Maignan (16) during a World Cup semifinal match in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo) The vignettes of some sports glasses unfold in a fairly interchangeable order. Spain’s 2-0 demolition of France in the first semi-final of this expanded World Cup on Tuesday came as an elegant dissection of abstracts with unflinching honesty and relentless determination.Taken at face value, the challenge of taking on France really seemed like a puzzle too formidable and dizzyingly abstract for any team to solve. They were the team to beat, an attacking juggernaut crushing one opponent after another with utter disdain. The stage was evidently set for Les Bleus’ Didier Deschamps and Kylian Mbappe to embrace immortality. In the end, however, this was only an option, as Spain arrived and put an irresistibly strong contradiction to their own sense of La Furia in such a very French idea of ​​supremacy.Atypically banal France met its match in incredibly beautiful Spain. France entered the examination hall with the swagger of a first-class master, and suddenly looked gradually confused. Spain, perhaps a little detached from all the pre-match chaos, were ecstatic to have passed the test.The narrative flipping arc was essentially evoked through the pages of Johan Cruyff’s book so embedded in the psyche of Spanish football. It was a triumph outlined in triangles.Cruyff’s obsession with obsession led him to develop a model based on triangles. Regardless of his position on the field, the player must position himself in such a way that he constantly creates geometric shapes, which allows him to offer more than one passing option to a teammate. “It’s not the man on the ball who decides where the ball goes, it’s the players without the ball,” the Dutch legend – the focal point of Rinus Michels’ Total Football – once said.Cruyff’s arrival in Catalonia, first as a player and then as a coach of FC Barcelona, ​​sprinkled the stardust of this idea across the thought space of Spanish football and created his “dream team” project. Since then, it has changed hands — from Pep Guardiola to Vicente del Bosque to Luis Enrique and now Luis de la Fuente. The triumph of geometry has been Spain’s business card ever since. He provoked debate, entertained and even angered his audience, but he was never abandoned. Entering the competition as overwhelming favourites, France may have played their worst game at the worst moment of this World Cup, but they couldn’t have faced Spain at their dazzling best at a more inopportune time. Mbappe and his entourage were outthought and outplayed in every aspect of the game and there could be no real complaints against 2018 World Cup winner manager Deschamps.Faced with Spain’s passing master class with all its displays of Euclidean geometry, Mbappe was stuck in a stagnant space throughout the match, as if drawn to a black hole, his ethereal speed drawn into the surrounding nothingness.Everything seemed to be in place for Spain from the moment Lamine Yamal earned a penalty for a foul on France full-back Lucas Digne and Mikel Oyarzabal was perfect from the spot to become the third Spanish player to score five goals in a single World Cup, after David Villa (2010) and Emilio Butraguena (1986).However, it was the second goal that breathed life into the team’s tiki-taka theater with all its magic and mystique. It was the result of a build-up starting with goalkeeper Unai Simon and culminated in Dani Olmo releasing Pedro Porro with a sumptuous pass and the French full-back controlling it to finish with the confidence of a proper No.9.Will Spain ever tire of their own style?Of course, it has its dark depths, and at times it feels like a burden in itself. Who could forget how the system dissolved into a stifling stalemate during the 2018 World Cup that resulted in a shock round of 16 exit against Russia after having 74% possession. The agony was repeated four years later when Spain lost to Morocco in another penalty shootout in the knockouts.Spain’s defeat to Morocco in Qatar led the federation to replace coach Luis Enrique De la Fuente, then in charge of the under-21 side. After spending years in the country’s youth system, De la Fuente inherited the overwhelming identity of the team that is easiest to analyze but always the hardest to beat and infused it with a winning mentality.There are times when art doesn’t need to beat anyone. This is when the game soars and transcends the result.