Another World Cup is within reach for Spain. Has any country been this good … at any sport?

Victory for Spain over Argentina in New Jersey on Monday morning would deliver a second World Cup crown – and the country’s third major piece of silverware in little more than a week.

While La Roja were ruthlessly carving their way through to the final, another group of Spanish footballers achieved something that would be remarkable if it wasn’t so routine for them.

Last Sunday, in front of barely 2000 people at the Racecourse Ground – the home of Wrexham FC – Spain defeated Germany 2-0 to claim the European Under-19 Championship.

The day before, in Sarajevo, Spain also met Germany in another final. This time, they prevailed 1-0 to lift the equivalent trophy for under-19 women. It was their fifth in succession, and eighth overall; they have not missed the final since 2011.

To run through the totality of Spain’s other recent tournament wins is to risk turning this article into a listicle – but there’s no other way to properly communicate the scale of their dominance of world football.

Their under-23 men won Olympic gold in 2024. Their senior men and women teams won the UEFA Nations League in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Their men won the last senior European Championship in 2024 for a record-breaking fourth time; their women lost the 2025 final to England on penalties. Of course, Spain also won the most recent FIFA Women’s World Cup in Sydney three years ago.

And we’ve not even touched club football yet. Barcelona has won four of the last six UEFA Women’s Champions Leagues, and Real Madrid have won two of the last five UEFA Champions Leagues and 15 in total, more than any other club. In fact, if we count men’s and women’s football together, Spanish clubs have won a combined 24 UCL titles, more than any other nation.

This is to speak nothing of the broader influence that Spanish footballing methodology has had on the way the game is perceived and played everywhere. Or the mass exporting of Spanish players to leagues around the world, where, more often than not, they outshine the locals.

If manager Luis de la Fuente guides Spain’s men to glory, they will become the first country to hold both World Cups simultaneously.

It would not only complete another terrific campaign, but place the sport’s greatest prize on top of a collection so vast, and spread so widely across men’s, women’s, senior, junior, and Olympic football, that it raises a larger question.

Has any nation ever been this good at a single sport – all of it – at once?

History offers a few contenders. In football, Brazil won men’s World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1970. Germany’s women won the Euros eight times and also the World Cup twice in the space of nine years. But neither nation had such a commanding grasp on the game in so many different spheres.

Outside of football, it gets trickier to find true equivalents. New Zealand in rugby? Australia in cricket? The United States in basketball? Kenya in distance running? Those countries did dominate, but did they dominate at all levels, at the same time? And if they did, did those sports really have the same breadth and depth of talent and interest as the world’s most popular sport? Is it not harder to be as good as Spain is at football? Can we even draw a fair comparison here?

So here’s another question. Why? How did Spain become this good?

To fully explain that would require an entire book’s worth of words. But as their trophy cabinet suggests, this is not down to the success of a single golden generation, or a single club, like Barcelona and their famed La Masia academy. Spain has instead built a series of golden factories, which all spit out world-class players onto a golden conveyor belt. They keep coming and coming. Young players are taught to value the ball, solve problems under pressure and think about the game the same way, producing footballers who speak a common footballing language, and who always seek to impress their will on matches, regardless of who their opponent is.

De le Fuenta embodies this Spanish machine beautifully. He coached their men’s under-19s, under-21s and Olympic side before taking the senior job. He is not imposing his tactics on a group of players who are strangers to one another, who unite only in fleeting international windows; his players have grown up playing like this together, under his instruction.

So it’s possible that Lionel Messi and Argentina could stop this Spanish team on Monday morning. The more troubling thought for the rest of the football world is that the next one is already on its way.