We’ve gone for a standard back four \u2013 as did the majority of teams in the tournament \u2013 and Spain dominate. They only conceded once all tournament, so how could they not?<\/p>\n
At right-back, it’s Pedro Porro, a man who played very much like a key cog in a champion team and not like a player who had his defending questioned at times for a Spurs side almost relegated from the Premier League.<\/p>\n
On the opposite flank is Marc Cucurella, this one of the easiest picks in the whole team. No winger had any great joy against him and he was arguably the man most responsible for Lionel Messi being so quiet in the final. Cucurella, only a regular in the Spain side since the summer of 2024, has become one of the best two or three left-backs in world football.<\/p>\n
In the centre, France’s Dayot Upamecano and William Saliba came into consideration, so too England’s Marc Guehi. However Pau Cubarsi had to be in, the 19-year-old Spaniard a worth winner of the young player award. We’ve paired him with Cristian Romero and not just because seeing how they combined would be fascinating. Romero defended well, but also posed at attacking threat – it was him who started Argentina’s comeback from two down against Egypt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’ve gone for a standard back four \u2013 as did the majority of teams in the tournament \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-816513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816513","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=816513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}