{"id":813578,"date":"2026-07-21T03:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T03:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813578\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T03:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T03:54:09","slug":"a-big-red-speaker-louis-vuitton-trophy-trunks-and-a-tattoo-bet-how-spain-celebrated-world-cup-win-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813578\/","title":{"rendered":"A big red speaker, Louis Vuitton trophy trunks and a tattoo bet \u2013 how Spain celebrated World Cup win | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the night that Spain won their first World Cup in 2010, Rodrigo Hern\u00e1ndez was on camp somewhere lost in the woods of Connecticut. He had been canoeing when the selecci\u00f3n beat Germany in the semi-final, upset to have missed it, and for the final he convinced one of the supervisors to let him watch, alone, on a mini-laptop in the hut where the staff slept. When Andr\u00e9s Iniesta scored the winning goal<\/a> in the 116th minute, he ran off screaming, doing laps of the lake. He was 14.<\/p>\n

On the night that Spain won their second World Cup 16 years later, Rodrigo Hern\u00e1ndez was back in the US<\/a>, not so far from there. When Ferran Torres scored <\/a>the winning goal in the 106th minute, he ran off screaming in a straighter line and accompanied this time: towards the corner where his other family were. And then, when it ended, when the fighting finished too, he collected the trophy, pausing just long enough for Donald Trump to leave centre stage before lifting it, his timing perfect even here.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the only trophy he had, but those could be handed over and this could not. By the time Rodri departed at 9.38pm eastern time, the last man out of the dressing room at the New Jersey New York Stadium, he couldn\u2019t carry them all: walking with him, just ahead, Ladis had to lend a hand. A football team is never just the players, nor even just the coaches. When he departed the dressing room nine minutes earlier, the same happened for Pau Cubars\u00ed. Nuria helped him, their boy: just 19, looking like a kid down here in the stadium in real life but not on the pitch where he\u2019s a leader. Luis de la Fuente was accompanied by Paloma.<\/p>\n

Rodri came with the trophy for the tournament\u2019s best player too. Cubars\u00ed had the young player award, Unai Sim\u00f3n the Golden Glove<\/a>. They also had two World Cups, every Spain player did: a replica of their own in a black Louis Vuitton trophy trunk, not easy to fit under an arm, and another in Lego. Rodri had three: both of those and the cup. They departed laden down, great big plastic bags full, pieces of the history they made. Shirts, in red and yellow and blue and white. Balls, boots. They had cut the net and taken pieces of that too. They had been given rings, NBA style.<\/p>\n

Mikel Merino holds a replica of the trophy in the dressing room after Spain\u2019s triumph. Photograph: Alex Pantling\/Fifa\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Before the final began, Marc Cucurella had sneaked off towards the touchline and buried a coin in the pitch, like that other left-back Joan Capdevila had done in 2010. Iniesta had been out there, his name chanted, as he showed the cup to the stands. After it, Sergio Ramos brought it back again. Dashing out, excitedly kissing it, he placed it on the plinth for this new generation, achieving the impossible in emulating them, to go and collect. One by one they passed, Borja Iglesias and Lamine Yamal among the most evasive in shaking Trump\u2019s hand, until Rodri took the trophy and lifted it to the sky.<\/p>\n

Nico Williams went to find his mum in the front row and handed over his medal. Lamine Yamal had made his way across to Lionel Messi, who was sitting but who stood for him, embracing the boy in the bath<\/a>, the successor: a rite of passage, an image that will be for ever. The actor Javier Bardem was hugging Iglesias, his new friend and idol. Ferran Torres was talking about a \u201cgreat liberation\u201d: he had suffered, felt how cruel this game could be, how people could be too, but he said: \u201cDestiny is written: God gives to those who deserve.\u201d And Keyne was, well, Keyne<\/a>. In the dressing room \u2013 the same one, Cucurella noted, where he had been at last year\u2019s Club World Cup \u2013 the champagne was cracked open.<\/p>\n

It was brief \u2013 the flight to Spain<\/a> was scheduled for 11pm and they wanted to get back \u2013 and soon they were on their way again. Behind the screen, along the corridor they came, way down in the depths and the half-light of the stadium. The president, the staff, all the players; the many, many people who made this so. Iglesias carried a bag so big it was like he was a student taking his washing home, and he was struggling to stop that box slipping. In the other hand he wheeled a big red speaker. Now playing: Dirty Cash (Money Talks) by PAWSA & Adventures of Stevie V. Lamine Yamal came, via the anti-doping room, in orange sunglasses, four chains, black cap on backwards. He didn\u2019t wear his medal, but most did, thick discs round their necks. And commemorative shirts, ordered up in case.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s Lamine Yamal and Argentina\u2019s Lionel Messi embrace after the match. Photograph: Jeenah Moon\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Back in Dallas, at a celebration after the semi-final victory<\/a>, someone had joked to the federation president, Rafael Louz\u00e1n, that the shirts should say world champions on one side and Finalissima winners on the other, two trophies in one. Tempting, but these bore just the one trophy, \u201cSpain 26\u201d on the back. The war in the Middle East had prevented the Finalissima from going ahead in Doha as scheduled in March and every time another option was offered, Argentina said no, the impression that of a team, a federation, running scared. \u201cGood job we didn\u2019t play,\u201d Emi Mart\u00ednez had said then, after they scraped past Mauritania in a hastily arranged friendly that filled the hole. \u201cIf we had played [Spain] like this \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Something like this might have happened. Not just because Argentina played like this but because Spain made them play like this. \u201cWe gave them a battering,\u201d came the verdict from one of those heading out of the dressing room. This wasn\u2019t just a win; this was more. Has a 1-0 ever been as dominant? There was a moment late in the game, still at 0-0, when the Spain fans chanted: \u201cLook at them! Look at them! How they shit themselves!\u201d and they weren\u2019t wrong. Argentina could not get out all game; as Spain turned the screw, still less, the goal seemingly inevitable; the surprise was that it hadn\u2019t come yet, that there would be just one. When it did it came as a liberation but also an act of irresistible logic.<\/p>\n

Ferran Torres scores the only goal of the World Cup final. Photograph: Jewel Samad\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Torres\u2019s shot was Spain\u2019s 20th. Argentina didn\u2019t manage one until the 115th minute. They didn\u2019t manage any on target, all game. Across 900 World Cup<\/a> games for which Opta has the stats, it is only the third time that a team has failed to shoot. And this in the final. They had done to Argentina what they did to France and to everyone, choking them. For the whole tournament Spain had an xG against of 0.3 per game. \u201cIf my gloves could talk, they would say they didn\u2019t have much work to do,\u201d Sim\u00f3n said. \u201cMany teams depend too much on the back line,\u201d Aymeric Laporte said, but not Spain.<\/p>\n

This was the triumph of a collective<\/a>, of a group; it ended in New York, but it was built in Chattanooga and beyond, over 51 days. It is the triumph of an idea, a conviction and of a coach too: a victory for De la Fuente and the system he leads and the system that made him. He began his coaching career at Deportivo Alav\u00e9s in the third tier, where he lasted just 11 games. It was November 2011 when he left and he has not had a club job since. For months, no one returned his calls. He was on the dole for a year and a half until he saw an advert for a job: the Spanish federation was looking for a coach for the youth system. He started in the under-17s. He won the European Championship with the under-19s and the under-21s. Then he won it with the senior side; now he has won the World Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked me what there is left to win; we said the next game in September because they\u2019re insatiable,\u201d he insisted afterwards. Sim\u00f3n said: \u201cThe manager is outstanding; he has been our leader.\u201d Cucurella, meanwhile, was in trouble. He had promised that if Spain won the World Cup, he would get a tattoo of De la Fuente\u2019s face and now he had to decide where to put it to minimise the damage, the flight home an opportunity to think. Not least to think what a fool he had been.<\/p>\n

Marc Cucurella is to have a tattoo of Luis de la Fuente\u2019s face after Spain\u2019s win. Photograph: Lisi Niesner\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cI said: \u2018You made a bad mistake\u2019,\u201d the coach joked. \u201cBut it\u2019s not like I am so horrendously ugly that you have to put it somewhere it can\u2019t be seen. And they are men of their word.\u201d For all the laughs, that final line really mattered, and he knows: 10 of them played with him at junior level. The first title he ever won was the Under-19 Euros in 2015. In the middle of his midfield that day was Rodrigo Hern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n

Eleven years on, 16 since he watched Spain\u2019s first World Cup win, motivation sought and identification found in what they achieved, Rodri was back in the US. The embodiment of that idea, a player who approached perfection here, no one played more passes nor made more tackles than him. No one had his weight either, the captain leading Spain out and leading them back too. Like so many of his teammates at a tournament that was an expression of justice and vindication too, he had suffered for this, a torn cruciate ligament overcome<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you fall, there\u2019s always a reason to get up again,\u201d he said and now he had it right here in his hands. It was 9.40pm when he boarded the bus bound for the airport, carrying the actual World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the night that Spain won their first World Cup in 2010, Rodrigo Hern\u00e1ndez was on camp somewhere…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-813578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}