Player Ratings: Spain vs Argentina, the 2026 World Cup Final

Ratings nights after a World Cup final are cruel arithmetic: two hours of football compressed into marks out of ten, medals on one side and tears on the other. At the New York / New Jersey Stadium, Spain’s numbers read like a champion’s report card. Argentina’s were smudged by one moment of madness and one man’s bittersweet farewell.

Spain: full marks for the metronome

Rodri, quite simply, was a ten. The Golden Ball winner completed 101 of 105 passes and won close to 80% of his duels — a holding midfielder running a World Cup final at walking pace. Behind him, 19-year-old Pau Cubarsí earned his Young Player award with a calm, positionally faultless shift beside Aymeric Laporte, the pair anchoring a seventh clean sheet in eight matches. Ferran Torres takes the match-winner’s glow: sent on by Luis de la Fuente, he needed a single clean strike in extra time to settle it. Unai Simón was tidy on the rare occasions Argentina asked a question, Marc Cucurella combative and, later, provocative. De la Fuente’s bench tilted another night his way.

Argentina: heartbreak and one red mist

Lionel Messi’s is the hardest card to mark — flashes of the old genius threaded through a frustrating, ultimately fruitless evening, and a late attempt to get Cucurella dismissed that sat awkwardly beside the tears at full time. Enzo Fernández fails outright: his late lunge on Cubarsí drew the red card that snapped Argentina’s resistance. Around them, the 2022 champions competed hard without ever truly wounding Spain’s back line. Lionel Scaloni, hinting he may step away, cannot fault the effort, only the fine margins. On a night that ended with Lamine Yamal embracing Messi, Spain’s ratings simply added up to more.