2026 FIFA World Cup · Spain national team
Every match La Roja played in 2026, from March’s send-off friendlies through the final whistle in New Jersey — result by result, goal by goal.
MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, USA · July 19, 2026
Spain conceded just 1 goal across all 8 World Cup matches — a single De Ketelaere strike in the quarterfinal against Belgium — on the way to the title.
Spain didn’t lose a single match all year, going 9-3-0 across friendlies and the tournament combined.
Widen the lens to all twelve matches and it’s still just 3 goals conceded — 1 at the World Cup, the other 2 across the four send-off friendlies beforehand.
Three of Spain’s five knockout matches were decided by a goal from a substitute — the same two players, in the tournament’s three highest-stakes moments.
Spain’s possession share in every World Cup match. The dotted line is 50% — Spain never fell below it, not even in the 51% squeeze against FRA. Their highest share of the ball, 74% against CPV, produced zero goals— possession alone didn’t win that one.
Cumulative expected goals across the World Cup — Spain’s chance quality (red) against what they allowed (gray). By the Final, Spain had built up 15.6 xG to the opposition’s 2.4 — a gap of 13.3 that widened almost every match.
The bench wasn’t the only story. Three more patterns from the same dataset.
Rodri touched the ball 910 times across the 8 World Cup matches — more than any other Spain player. Next closest: Pau Cubarsí, 777.
Spain committed 21 fouls against Argentina in the Final — their most physical match all year, well clear of the next-highest (14, vs Uruguay).
In the Final, Unai Simón needed 0 saves — Argentina never had a shot on target. Emiliano Martínez needed 11 saves, a World Cup final record.
Filter by stage, tap a match for goal scorers, cards, and the shot/possession breakdown where it was reported.
Ferran Torres settles it in extra time — Spain's second World Cup title, 16 years after their first.
Methodology
Compiled from post-match reports and box scores across FIFA, ESPN, and other outlets for every Spain men’s national team match played between January and July 2026. Shots, possession, passes, fouls, and xG are shown where a source publishes them — corners and offsides in particular are inconsistently reported across matches, so those fields are left blank rather than estimated. Where sources disagreed on a number, the figure corroborated by more than one outlet was used. Player-level stats (touches, xG, xA, defensive actions) are only available for the 8 World Cup matches — friendlies aren’t tracked to that depth by available sources. The “bench goal” finding is derived directly from each match’s starting lineup, not asserted by hand.
Cards, substitutions, and goal details for the 8 World Cup matches are sourced directly from ESPN’s structured match-event feed rather than summarized prose — this caught and corrected several missing cards in the original dataset, plus the exact substitution minutes powering each match’s timeline. Shot-level detail (distance, expected goals, outcome) behind the shot quality and shot outcome breakdowns comes from ESPN’s team-stats page, cross-checked against the box score’s shot totals before being used.
Sources
FIFA match centre, ESPN, and other post-match reporting, current as of July 2026. Player photos: Bryan Berlin, Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.