Spain Win 2026 World Cup — Rodri Relives His 14-Year-Old Self Celebrating

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Luis de la Fuente’s team was the best at the tournament by some margin but are not satisfied yet with focus now on ‘the next game in September’

On the night that Spain won their first World Cup in 2010, Rodrigo Hernández was on camp somewhere lost in the woods of Connecticut. He had been canoeing when the selección beat Germany in the semi-final, upset to have missed it, and for the final he convinced one of the supervisors to let him watch, alone, on a mini-laptop in the hut where the staff slept. When Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal in the 116th minute, he ran off screaming, doing laps of the lake. He was 14.

On the night that Spain won their second World Cup 16 years later, Rodrigo Hernández was back in the US , not so far from there. When Ferran Torres scored the winning goal in the 106th minute, he ran off screaming in a straighter line and accompanied this time: towards the corner where his other family were. And then, when it ended, when the fighting finished too, he collected the trophy, pausing just long enough for Donald Trump to leave centre stage before lifting it, his timing perfect even here.

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