AMNA NAWAZ: There was a hero's welcome for the Spanish soccer team as they arrived in Madrid, where throngs of fans cheered their World Cup win over Argentina.

It followed a tense final match, as Spain made history, securing their first title since 2010 and their second Cup title ever.

Stephanie Sy tells us more.

STEPHANIE SY: Amna, it was a 120-minute display of athleticism and a win for soccer, as one commentator put it.

Spain's signature possession-based play eventually wore down Argentina's tenacious defense.

In extra time, with Argentina down one man from a late red card, Spanish forward Ferran Torres delivered the defining goal, the only goal of the game, scored 106 minutes in.

Spain's victory ends Argentina and its star Lionel Messi's World Cup reign and caps off a tournament that defied expectations on several fronts.

For more, I'm joined now by Leander Schaerlaeckens, soccer columnist at The Guardian and author of "The Long Game."

Leander, I hope you had fun at the game yesterday.

It sure was a long game, especially for us soccer neophytes, Spain, of course, controlling possession of the ball through much of the match, but they couldn't seem to break through Argentina's defense, even with so many shot attempts, at least until the very end.

What do you think Spain did tactically to ultimately clinch the win?

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS, The Guardian: So what you watched last night was a game that was very, very, very lopsided, where Spain is a much better team.

Spain counterpresses really well.

Spain trapped the Argentines in their own half, that, on the rare occasion when they even got on to the ball, they couldn't escape their half.

They had trouble connecting passes.

It's just that Spain also was having a tough night just putting the ball in the goal.

And this is what we have seen a lot from Argentina.

This is by no means the best team in the world, hasn't been for some time, arguably wasn't even when they won the thing in 2022.

But they're absolute specialists at grinding out these difficult matches, at making it tough on their opponents, at stealing a goal here and there and getting the result they need.

That is a very veteran Argentine team that came into this final realizing, we can't go toe-to-toe with this Spanish team.

We need to kind of break this game.

We need to be defensive.

We need to be opportunistic.

And so they managed to keep the Spanish at bay until the 106th minute just by kind of defending, defending, defending, and not actually taking a shot themselves until the 115th minute of the game, when they'd finally gone behind and had no choice but to start pushing forward.

STEPHANIE SY: Yes, and this is the first time I understand in 60 years that a team failed to register a single shot in 90 minutes.

Several sportswriters, Leander, have condemned some of Argentina's players' combative behavior on the pitch.

And we learned this afternoon that FIFA is investigating whether Argentina players violated codes and clashes on the field post-match.

So do you agree that they crossed a line that besmirches the sport in these tactics?

And did that rough play strategy end up costing them in that late red card?

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS: Well, soccer is a sport that I'm not entirely sure can still be besmirched at this point, because it is both the beautiful game and it can sometimes descend into some pretty ugly scenes.

I think you saw that last night.

I think Argentina understood that it needed to kind of be dirty in that way if it was going to be able to compete with Spain.

But, yes, it got pretty messy there towards the end when the game was over, no pun intended.

And the Argentines just took out their frustration on the Spanish players who were celebrating one of the crowning achievements of their careers, winning the World Cup.

Some punches were thrown after the Argentines had already committed a lot of fouls during that game.

So they did not cover themselves in glory in the playing sense and not in the sportsmanship sense either.

STEPHANIE SY: Leander, we have to talk about Lionel Messi, who at 39 years old still had an extraordinary World Cup, even though he was in tears at the loss yesterday.

Is this it for him?

Is this the last World Cup appearance?

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS: I was convinced after 2022, when he won the thing in Qatar with Argentina, that he was done then, when he was 35 years old.

So I'm not going to make the same mistake.

But I will say that his legacy is untarnished and cannot be broken down at all at this point.

He has taken Argentina teams that were always flawed in different ways to three World Cup finals now.

So it doesn't really matter what he does or doesn't do from here on out.

He will still be remembered as the greatest player of all time.

STEPHANIE SY: Just zooming out, Leander, a lot of the worst fears about this World Cup didn't materialize.

Ratings were high.

The seats were sold out.

Foreign tourists enjoyed our ranch dressing.

But then you also had politics come into play with President Trump inserting himself at different times.

How would you rate the overall success of these games?

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS: I think this was an outstanding World Cup.

We had just wonderful Cinderella stories with Cape Verde and with Curacao.

And we saw upsets and all the stars came out to play.

So, broadly, it was really successful, and it accomplished everything that FIFA sort of designed for it to do.

It made a ton of money.

The Guardian has reported that this World Cup will clear north of $15 billion in revenue for FIFA, which is more than it had projected.

And so the kind of policy decision it made of cozying up to Donald Trump and making sure that it kept him on their side has kind of worked out for FIFA, which, of course, has a long history of cozying up to presidents and autocrats in order to make sure that its signature event, which drives the revenue that keeps FIFA's graft machine going, comes off without a hitch.

STEPHANIE SY: Leander, you wrote a book about U.S.

men's soccer.

When you look at this tournament, where do we stand?

There still appears to be a big gap between the U.S.

and some of the most elite teams in the world.

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS: What you're starting to see is the U.S.

getting closer to the elite national teams, but still having a ways to go.

And I don't know that you are going to fully catch up until you start producing more world-class players.

And in order to do that, you have to really take advantage of this broad grassroots system that we have in this country.

And the issue there is that, to so many people, to so much young talent, youth soccer is still inaccessible because it's expensive.

We have a pay-to-play system that has frozen out so many young players, so many demographics that you would really like to be able to participate in the sport year after year after year.

And so that's the problem that we have to solve for the U.S.

to get better at men's soccer.

It's not a popularity issue anymore.

It's an accessibility issue.

STEPHANIE SY: That is Leander Schaerlaeckens with The Guardian and author of "The Long Game."

Thanks so much.

LEANDER SCHAERLAECKENS: Thank you.