It was no secret that Rodri didn’t return to his best in 2025-26 after a lengthy injury absence. But after exercising restraint and patience, he has led Spain to a second World Cup final.
It’s been a long road back for Dani Olmo pops up all over the place; Fabián Ruiz patrols across the midfield in front of Rodri; the full-backs are adventurous – only Kylian Mbappé failed to exchange a single pass in the first half as Les Bleus struggled to plot routes through the Spanish midfield and backline.
Olise’s ability to slice open defences had been a feature in previous games, but he only managed to record two line-breaking passes against Spain, half his previous lowest at the tournament.
And more generally, his effectiveness in possession was way down.
The ‘possession lost’ metric can be a slightly misleading one for creative players because by definition they are perhaps more likely to cause turnovers due to playing riskier passes. But from his 55 touches of the ball, Olise lost possession 36.4% of the time; his previous high for this World Cup was 23.7% vs Iraq.
France were simply outfought and outthought.
Spain attempted 22 tackles to France’s 14 and won 14 to Les Bleus’ eight.
Spain won 55.9% of the game’s duels, with France’s 44.1% success rate in those tussles their lowest in a World Cup game since 1978.
And France won just 32% of the game’s aerial duels. That amounted to eight, their fewest in a World Cup game for 40 years.
The fluidity referenced before in relation to Spain’s in-possession habits is also a factor off the ball. Even if they don’t necessarily look compact, they have such intensity when hunting the ball that they can suffocate you anyway.
There was a fine example in just the third minute of the semi-final. Mbappé seemed to have spun away from Rodri out wide, but Olmo was immediately on the scene to slow the Frenchman’s progress, allowing Rodri to get back and regain possession.
That was the one time someone escaped Rodri in such a manner, and he still ended up coming out with possession thanks to the team’s collective ravenousness.
Time and time again, Rodri was there to frustrate France in some capacity.
Whether he was dispossessing Ousmane Dembélé just outside the box late in the first half, doing the same to Mbappé in the area soon after, conceding necessary disruptive fouls in unthreatening areas, or winning aerial duels in his own box, Rodri put out fires continuously.
Rodri undoubtedly played his part in Spain’s broader joy in the match’s physical tussles, which felt definitive in the contest. His 11 duel wins was as many as Aurélien Tchouaméni and Adrien Rabiot combined; he was the only player on the pitch to tally more than two aerial duels and win all of them (4/4); and no one bettered his four tackle attempts.
We associate Spain with dominance through possession, but in the semi-final they only had a little over 50% of the ball. Instead, they blunted the best attack at the 2026 World Cup through their relentlessness, and Rodri was central to that. In the final awaits the best attacker at the 2026 World Cup –
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