Steve McManaman Predicts Spain to Defeat Argentina in World Cup Final

Steve McManaman is not sitting on the fence. With Spain and Argentina set to collide in New York on Sunday in a World Cup final thick with history and narrative, the former Liverpool winger is predicting a clear, almost routine Spanish victory.

On ESPN FC, McManaman was asked to call it. He barely paused.

“I’m going 3-1 to Spain. I’ll be nice and concise,” he said, declining to dress it up with tactical breakdowns or caveats. For him, the reigning European champions have shown enough in the past month to suggest they will handle the occasion and the opposition.

Spain’s surge and France brushed aside

Spain arrive in the final carrying the weight and swagger of a team that has rediscovered its old authority. Luis de la Fuente’s side booked their place with a commanding 2-0 win over France in Dallas on Tuesday, a semi-final that was supposed to test their nerve and instead underlined their control.

They did not just edge the 2018 world champions. They dominated them. Spain’s press suffocated France’s build-up, their midfield recycled the ball with icy composure, and the attack struck with the kind of precision that once defined their 2010 world title run.

That victory has left them one step from a first World Cup crown since 2010 and only the second in their history. On this evidence, McManaman sees a team that looks comfortable on the biggest stage, not one feeling the strain of expectation.

Argentina’s late drama and familiar resilience

Argentina, though, have taken a very different road to New York. Where Spain have looked smooth, Argentina have leaned again on grit, belief, and the capacity to suffer.

Their semi-final against England in Dallas was another entry in the long catalogue of Albiceleste comebacks. Chasing the game and staring at elimination, they somehow found two goals in the final five minutes plus stoppage time to turn a 0-1 deficit into a 2-1 win over the Euro 2024 finalists.

It was their seventh victory of the tournament, and almost a distillation of their footballing identity: never beaten, even when the clock insists they should be. They bend matches to their will late on, when legs tire and minds fray.

That resilience is exactly what Spain must crack. McManaman, though, clearly believes the European champions will keep Argentina at arm’s length, even if La Albiceleste land a punch of their own.

A rivalry with roots in 1966

Beneath the tactical intrigue lies a thin but potent thread of history. Spain and Argentina have met only once before at a World Cup, back in 1966 in England. That Group 2 clash ended 2-1 to Argentina, a result that sent them into the quarter-finals and left Spain heading home.

Argentina’s run that year was cut short by the eventual champions, England, but that lone World Cup meeting has lingered as an oddity between two footballing heavyweights who somehow kept missing each other on the global stage.

Now, almost six decades later, the stakes could not be higher. McManaman is convinced that De la Fuente’s team will see this final as a chance to redress that old defeat, however distant it may feel to modern players. For a country that guards its footballing pride so fiercely, the idea of “revenge” can still carry weight, even across generations.

The final that never was, and the one that now awaits

The two nations were supposed to test each other in March in the Finalissima, a showpiece that would have pitted the European champions against the South American champions. That game was canceled for various reasons, denying both sides an early look at each other and robbing fans of a tantalising curtain-raiser.

Instead, they meet now with everything on the line and no recent head-to-head data to lean on. No dress rehearsal. Just the main event in New York.

McManaman has nailed his colours to the mast: Spain by two goals, 3-1, and a second star on the shirt for La Roja.

Whether Argentina’s habit of ripping up scripts survives one more night, or Spain’s new era crowns itself with the biggest prize of all, will be decided under the lights on Sunday.