Spain end France's World Cup — and Deschamps' reign

Spain: a team that keeps arriving

This Spain side have had that quiet inevitability about them all tournament — the kind of team that doesn't always dazzle in the highlights reel but consistently ends up on the right side of the scoreline when it matters. A World Cup semi-final on neutral American soil, against France of all opponents, and they handled it. That's not nothing.

They now face whoever emerges from the other semi-final with genuine momentum and, more importantly, genuine belief. Spain have been here before — recently, repeatedly — but a World Cup final is still a World Cup final.

France: where did that go

The word Foot Mercato reached for was insipide — insipid. For a squad of France's calibre, that's the kind of verdict that stings long after the flight home. This wasn't a France side that ran into a great performance and lost narrowly; this was a France side that, by the accounts emerging from Dallas, simply didn't show up at the level the occasion demanded.

The exact scoreline and goalscorers haven't been confirmed in available reporting, so we won't manufacture a narrative around specifics that aren't there. What is clear: Spain won, France didn't trouble them enough, and the margin felt comfortable.

The Deschamps question

Here's where it gets bigger than a single result. Foot Mercato's framing of this as Deschamps' final match in charge appears to signal the end of one of international football's longest-running managerial tenures — though whether that means resignation, a pre-agreed departure, or something else entirely hasn't been elaborated upon in available reporting.

What's not in doubt is the scale of the moment. Deschamps has been France manager since 2012. He won the World Cup in 2018. He reached the final in 2022. He has, by any measure, been one of the defining figures of the modern international game. If Dallas was the last one, it's a flat ending to a remarkable chapter — and France will know it.

The rebuild question now lands immediately. Who takes over a squad that still contains generational talent but has just been described as insipid in a World Cup semi-final? That's the conversation French football wakes up to.

Spain, meanwhile, don't have to think about any of that. They're in a World Cup final.