England and France have rightfully earned a great deal of criticism for ruining my prediction. I still say France was wrongly penalized for Spain’s first goal. Some say that it was a penalty by the letter of the law. Well, if the law says I can draw a penalty by jumping directly into the path of a leg that is being reasonably swung towards the ball– despite my committing a handball just before I get kicked– then the law needs changing. France was flat regardless, and Spain slowly strangled the life out of them… but that little downer just before the water break didn’t help France at all.

England’s collapse was humiliating enough that I don’t feel as bad about the US tanking against Belgium. To park the bus with over 30 minutes of regular time left was clearly insane. To go with essentially six backs for that long against Messi et al was insane. For five or ten minutes? Or if you’re down to nine or ten men? Maybe then it would make sense. But when you’re the fourth-ranked team on the planet, and you’ve had success attacking your opponent, and you have two solid scoring options… why? Why crawl into your shell? Why tell Argentina that they’re not going to have to worry about counters? Dumb.

Granted, if it had worked, all would be forgiven and Tuchel would be the genius who got England back to the final for the first time since 101966. The problem is… it didn’t work. I saw somewhere that in the roughly 37 minutes between England’s goal and Argentina’s gamewinner, Argentina had 88% possession. There was an 18 minute stretch in there in which England completed just two passes, while Argentina completed over 100. Argentina again showed life and desperation and smart tactical flexibility, and Messi again showed his mettle, and his teammates again stepped up.

Yesterday’s bronze medal scrimmage was a sour sort of entertaining. It was nice to see a 6-4 game, and yay for Mbappé setting a record, and yay for Saka scoring a consolation hat trick, and so on, but the teams were clearly mailing it in.

Anyways, time to call the final so everyone can place the opposite bet. For now I don’t care who wins, so long as it’s legitimately entertaining. Maybe something will happen early in the game that forces me to take a side. I don’t know whether the scriptwriters would rather have Messi and Friends be the first repeat champions since 1962, or have the torch passed on to Yamal and Rodri and Porro and so on.

Argentina has beaten everyone they’ve faced, and they’re the only team to have won every game so far. In fact, I think they’re only the second team to be 7-0 in a World Cup– I’ll have to check. They’ve been spectacular… late in the second half and in extra time. You don’t want to have to count on winning it late over and over again, and the good fortune has to run out sometime. Doesn’t it?

I’m leaning towards Spain, because they’ve been more methodical and they’ve beaten generally stronger teams than Argentina has. If anybody has the skill and discipline to not completely flake out like England did, it’s this year’s Spanish team. That said, after reading my own blog, I’m not leaving this call up to my own judgement. Heads Argentina, tails Spain.

Tails, Spain. They will co-host in 2030 as defending champions.