Spain did not just win the World Cup on Sunday. They walked off with nearly every individual prize on offer, and the pick of them landed in an unlikely place. Pau Cubarsi, a 19-year-old centre-back, was named the tournament's best young player.
A defender taking that award is worth a second look. The young player prize usually goes to a forward, the teenager who scores the goals and fills the highlight reel. Cubarsi does neither. He defends, and over the last month he did it about as well as anyone at the tournament.
A defender, not a forward
The eye-catching part is who he beat to it. Lamine Yamal, his Barcelona teammate and fellow 19-year-old, was the name most people had pencilled in. Instead the honour went to the quieter man in the same side, per ESPN.
Cubarsi's case was built on control rather than flash. Spain conceded rarely across the whole tournament, and the young centre-back sat at the heart of that. In Sunday's 1-0 final, Argentina did not manage a single shot on target. For a team with that much firepower, that is a striking way to be shut out.
There was nothing frantic about the way Spain defended. They squeezed the space, read the danger early, and let very little through. Cubarsi, calm in possession and quick to cover, played like a man with a decade more in his legs than his birth certificate allows.
His rise has been quick. Not long ago Cubarsi was a name known mostly to the scouts and the academy watchers. Now he is a World Cup winner with an individual honour to his name, trusted in the biggest match of his life and unmoved by it.
The award makes a quiet statement too. Best young player at a World Cup usually lands on an attacker, so seeing it go to a centre-back is a small break from habit. On this evidence it was earned rather than sentimental.
Part of a clean sweep
The young player prize did not arrive on its own. Spain took the individual honours almost wholesale. Rodri collected the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player, Unai Simon the Golden Glove as its best goalkeeper, and Cubarsi the young player award.
That is the sort of clean sweep that follows a side who defend as a unit and win the matches that matter. It is not often one nation collects the Golden Ball, the Golden Glove and the young player award in the same summer. Simon was barely tested in the final. The back line in front of him, Cubarsi included, saw to that.
For Barcelona, it is a neat piece of business. Two of their teenagers came home from a World Cup with winners' medals and a place among the game's brightest prospects. One of them scores, the other stops. Both are 19.
What comes next
The temptation now is to load expectation onto him, and plenty will. A world title at 19, best young player at a World Cup, and a defensive record that speaks for itself: that is a lot to carry into a career that has barely started.
Cubarsi seems unlikely to mind the noise. He spent the last month playing as though he could not hear it. Spain go home as champions with a squad built to stay there, which leaves one happy question hanging over the rest: how long can this young side keep winning?
Sources
- ESPN
- Sky Sports
- Cover photo: Saadick Dhansay / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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