I don’t think it’s as much about the level of Argentina and more about the level Spain plays at. There’s basically no team that can beat them at the moment. The best you can do is defend and hope they don’t score (like Cape Verde did). They are so dominant and so good at holding the ball that they even made a team like France look incompetent. .

Most of the Argentina players didn’t play at their best (just like they’ve done all tournament) but Spain also just made it impossible for them. Add to that the injuries and forced subs of both of their starting centre backs, the red card and that idiot Paredes coming and only kicking players instead of the ball and there was just no chance of them achieving anything.

I feel bad for Messi, he really dragged the team all the way to the final only for his teammates to completely give up once they got there. It made it easy for Spain to neutralize Messi and with that, all threat from Argentina was gone. If Messi retires (which I think he will), I think Argentina won’t be much of a threat for the foreseeable future.