To win a World Cup, everything usually has to be perfect. The manager and the players have to exist in harmony. The squad has to be in delicate balance: between talent and tenacity, youth and experience, self-belief and self-control. A team needs momentum, and good fortune, and unity. Spain, in the year preceding this year\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup, had none of those things.<\/p>\n
The squad was in a state of open revolt. More than half the team had walked away, withdrawing their labor in protest at their treatment not only by executives of the Spanish soccer federation but also by their coach, Jorge Vilda. The country\u2019s great star, the leading light of its golden generation, had watched it all from the sideline, desperately willing her anterior cruciate ligament to heal.<\/p>\n
Even when a truce was found, a cadre of the mutineers restored to the team\u2019s ranks, it was an uneasy one. The peace was born of convenience, rather than resolution. The squad was still cleaved by rifts and schisms and cliques. Winning a tournament is a matter of marginal gains, of fine details. Spain had none of them. In its circumstances, it seemed simply not possible for it to become world champion.<\/p>\n
And yet, and yet, at the end of the biggest, widest, broadest, deepest Women\u2019s World Cup, it was Spain\u2019s players standing on the podium, the golden confetti settling on their shoulders, wreathed in the acrid smoke of fireworks, their hands clasped around the trophy for the first time.<\/p>\n
A team that had endured all that Spain has in the past 12 months should not be able to win a World Cup. It should not have outlasted every other team in the tournament. It should not have narrowly beaten England, so wily and effective and resolute, in a tense, delicately poised final, 1-0. Except that Spain could, and did, the ultimate expression of succeeding despite it all.<\/p>\n
Spain did so not because it found a solution to all of its troubles. Alexia Putellas, the team\u2019s injured star, did not miraculously return to fitness. She has been here, but she has not been herself. The players and the manager did not make up in the nick of time; even in the aftermath of victory, nobody quite wanted to broach that subject.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am happy for the people who are happy for us,\u201d said Vilda, the coach.<\/p>\n
Aitana Bonmat\u00ed, one of the restored protesters, was asked what Vilda had been like as a coach during the tournament. She took a breath and gave the most diplomatic answer she could. Initially, it extended to just three words. \u201cEverything is good,\u201d she said. Asked to expand, all she added was that \u201cit is not fair to discuss this in this moment.\u201d Jenni Hermoso, tears in her eyes, wanted to make sure that the exiled players who had missed out knew \u201cthey were part of this process, part of this star.\u201d<\/p>\n
No, the secret behind Spain\u2019s success was simple. Talent, in vast enough quantities and deep enough reserves, conquers everything. No other team in this tournament had Spain\u2019s raw, undiluted, undeniable quality. The competition was fierce, and yet, in the harsh light of day, no other country really came close.<\/p>\n
That was clear even in the final, even against a team of England\u2019s resolve and reputation. Only a single goal separated the finalists, in the end. As Alba Redondo said, there were times when England \u2014 the reigning European champion, the admittedly slender pregame favorite \u2014 ensured that Spain \u201chad to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
But far more frequent were the times when it appeared that Spain was playing if not quite a different sport, then one on a significantly higher difficulty level.<\/p>\n
In the first half, in particular, there were moments when Spain\u2019s performance felt like a technical clinic. Redondo might have scored after one intricate, sweeping move had pried England apart; Salma Paralluelo could have capitalized on two.<\/p>\n
The buildup to Olga Carmona\u2019s first-half goal \u2014 the only goal of the final \u2014 was swift, brutal and exquisite, all at the same time: Lucy Bronze guided down a blind alley; Teresa Abelleira and Mariona Caldentey expertly levering open the space she had vacated; Carmona applying the finish.<\/p>\n
The best expression of Spain\u2019s superiority, though, was in almost every pass played and touch taken and decision made by the unparalleled Bonmat\u00ed, the Barcelona midfielder who decided to use the greatest stage soccer has to offer to paint her own personal masterpiece. She was elected player of the tournament after the game. She could have won the award for Sunday\u2019s performance alone.<\/p>\n
It was Bonmat\u00ed, more than anyone else, who was at the heart of every one of Spain\u2019s painstakingly constructed attacks. It was Bonmat\u00ed who set the game\u2019s rhythm, determined its pace, selected her team\u2019s angle of assault. She was Spain\u2019s creative force, its destructive element. More than once, she changed the tone of the game with a single touch, an apparently minor choice that transformed everything.<\/p>\n
Strictly speaking, the result did not need to have been quite as close as it was. Hermoso could have doubled Spain\u2019s lead, deprived England of its last wisps of hope, with a second-half penalty kick \u2014 awarded for a careless handball by Keira Walsh \u2014 but she struck her effort too tamely, and too closely, to Mary Earps, the England goalkeeper.<\/p>\n
Just for a moment, Spain\u2019s stranglehold on the game was broken. England fizzed with renewed possibility, revived hope. \u201cWe suffered the most when we saw there were 13 minutes of injury time,\u201d Redondo said. If true, they did not show it. \u201cI was not nervous, not really,\u201d Spain\u2019s goalkeeper, Cata Coll, said.<\/p>\n
Her teammates took the ball, asserted control, waited out the ticking clock, trusted their talent to see them through. It was only when the game was over, when they were gathered in a circle, their arms draped over one another\u2019s shoulders, unity descending at last, that it occurred to them what they had done.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were asking each other what had happened,\u201d Redondo said. \u201cWe were trying to work out what we had just done.\u201d Even after they had lifted the trophy and paraded it around the field, Redondo said she could not quite believe the weight of the medal around her neck. She spent some time asking people to hold it, to feel it, to see just how real it was.<\/p>\n
She pointed to the crest on the new jersey she had put on. Above the Spanish badge was a single star. It had not been there before. That is the ultimate reward. It is not possible to obtain one unless everything is just right. Unless, as Spain proved, you have the talent \u2014 bright and clear and irresistible \u2014 to make sure nothing can go wrong.<\/p>\n