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There may not be a clear favorite on Sunday when Spain and Argentina meet in the FIFA World Cup final, but there are very discernable differences in the way each team arrived at this point. For Argentina, Lionel Messi is the star. He is the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer with 21 goals. In 2022, he was the tournament’s best player with seven goals and three assists. Entering Sunday, he has eight goals and four assists at this World Cup. Unquestionably, Messi has a supporting cast with Argentina that consists of global stars. But Messi is the star. On the other side, it is a completely different approach. For Spain, there are world-class players on the roster, but the team is the star. Even with a player such as Lamine Yamal, who was recently a finalist for the Ballon d’Or as an 18-year-old, no single player is above the team or its system. Instead, every player fills a role within that system and sticks to that role. Former Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Inter Milan star forward Zlatan Ibrahimović, now a FOX Sports analyst, put it succinctly immediately following Spain’s 2-0 win over France in the World Cup semifinal. “If I speak about Spain, I don’t speak about one star,” Ibrahimović said. “The team is the star. When they shine, they shine collectively — even if you have Yamal. This is not a team that is dependent on one player. It is not an individual performance. It is a team performance. Everything they do is as a team.” The Foundation Of Spain’s System At the heart of this team is a system that has been evolving for many years. From 2004-2008, Spain was coached by Luis Aragonés. Then, from 2008-2016, La Roja were led by Vicente del Bosque. Those years saw Spain achieve unprecedented success, winning the Euros in 2008 and 2012, along with the World Cup in 2010. The teams were led by a wave of talent that included David Villa, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fàbregas, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué and Carles Puyol. At that time, Spain (and Barcelona) developed and perfected the “tiki-taka” style of playing which featured constant short passes, players forming triangles to have multiple passing options and a heavy emphasis on possession with a high tempo. For that generation of players, it worked. But, like all things, it ultimately came to an end. Replacing that generation was difficult, as Spain failed to get out of group play at the 2014 World Cup and then was bounced in the round of 16 in 2018 and 2022. But following the 2022 exit, Spain took huge steps in its evolution in hiring Luis de la Fuente to coach the first team. It was a bold hire because, despite having gone three World Cups without winning a knockout game, Spain decided to remain on the same track and go with an insider. De La Fuente’s Fresh Approach De la Fuente was promoted from within Spain after having successfully coached its youth teams since 2013. Prior to that, he had been unsuccessful in coaching stints at the club levels in Spain and Portugal. But with Spain’s youth teams, de la Fuente had been building something special with a new generation of Spanish players. He won the Euro U-19 championship, and then he moved up an age group and led the U-21 team to the Euro U-21 championship. His last stop before the full national team was the 2020 Olympics (held in 2021) with the U-23 team, which he led to the silver medal after losing to Brazil in the final. When he moved to the first team, he knew what was working. Despite him being an insider, he had his own ideas. He didn’t want to get rid of Spain’s high-tempo and speedy passing style, but instead wanted to breathe new life into it with tactical tweaks. He had Spain be more direct and get the ball into the attacking third quicker. De la Fuente also wanted to create overloads centrally to open space up for wingers to have more room to operate in one-on-one situations. Then, on defense, he developed a commitment to the team’s shape to close space and win the ball back. But de la Fuente has also not been acting alone. Other Spain youth national team managers during his time at the youth level were creating the same system. Just as the players worked together, the coaches were as well. Santi Denia was also a Spanish youth national team coach during that era after being hired in 2010. When de la Fuente moved to the full team manager, Denia was hired to replace him with Spain’s U-21 team and the 2024 Olympic team. The 2024 Spanish Summer Working in unison, de la Fuente and Denia created an incredible summer of 2024 for Spanish soccer. First there was the full national team at Euro 2024, where de la Fuente’s team won all seven of its games to win the title. The road was extremely difficult. Spain won all three of its group stage games against Italy, Croatia and Albania without conceding a goal. Then, in the knockouts, it rolled past Georgia, hosts Germany, France and then England in the final. As for the Olympic team, Denia won the gold medal playing essentially the same system. In the knockouts, Spain defeated Japan and Morocco and then France in the gold-medal game (in Paris). Just as important as winning the Euros and the Olympic gold medal were for Spain, Denia was able to develop players who made seamless transitions to the full team after playing the same system. Five players from the Olympic gold-winning team made the World Cup squad, including key players Pau Cubarsí and Álex Baena. It would have been six if star forward Fermín López hadn’t suffered a broken foot just before the tournament. “Luis is a master of managing a team,” Denia told FIFA recently. “He understands how players tick, he knows how to guide them, and he senses who should start each match. He adds his own twist to an established model, taking into account the players’ profiles. That has delivered results for the association in recent years and helped us win titles. We believe in that model, and Luis believes in it more than anyone.” The 2026 World Cup Run De la Fuente was able to help create and implement a new system and style of play that was consistent within Spain’s youth team and several of the country’s clubs. That helped to make it easier to name a roster for the 2026 World Cup. But it was also not without controversy. When the roster was named, it did not consist of a single Real Madrid player. La Liga rival Barcelona, meanwhile, sent eight players onto the World Cup team. In Spain, it was highly controversial and almost unthinkable to have Real Madrid absent from La Roja on the biggest stage. For de la Fuente, he said the roster was “perfect,” and that “it’s the 26 players we wanted.” Once again, it was de la Fuente’s belief in the system. “The best players aren’t just at Real Madrid, Barcelona or Atlético. There are very good players at other clubs,” de la Fuente explained before the tournament. “As we have a deep understanding of Spanish football, we pick the ones we believe best fit our system.” The past two months have proven de la Fuente correct. In the first seven games of the World Cup, Spain has not lost and has shockingly conceded just one goal. Its only blemishes were a 0-0 draw against Cape Verde and a goal conceded in a 2-1 win over Belgium in the quarterfinal. Former French World Cup winner Thierry Henry, who now serves as an analyst for FOX Sports, knows de la Fuente’s system well. He coached France’s U-23 team at the Olympics, which lost to Santi Denia and Spain in the gold-medal game. “The Spanish team finds a way to be successful at every level,” Henry said after Spain defeated France. “Women’s football, youth tournaments, the Olympics — I lost a final against them — time and time again they are coming. Identity and philosophy, they all play the same way at every level. The coach was the youth team coach normally, but because he knows the system and all the players know the system, you can see that it is a team with stars in it. But first and foremost, it is a team effort. Today, we were not in the game because mainly because when the Spanish team gets the ball, they don’t give you the ball back.” “I also want to give credit to the whole system of what they put in place,” Henry added. “Because Spain never used to win like that, and now they win at every level.” Spain and its impressive system will now be put to the test — against a Messi-led Argentina side that is the reigning World Cup champion and a two-time defending Copa América champion. The ultimate system vs. the ultimate star.Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
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Alaska’s economic development agency wants to fund oil exploration on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — one of the most hotly debated areas of federal land in the country. (Photo by Max Graham)
After decades of fierce debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, oil companies largely appear leery of the idea.
The contested swath of federal land, on Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coast, is politically fraught and far from existing roads and pipelines. And given the limited data on its geology, oil executives still aren’t sure how much petroleum is trapped underground.
In spite of three federal lease sales of refuge land in the past decade — with the most recent sale just last month — not a single major oil company has bid.
Instead, the industry is flooding into a different federal area far to the west, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, where there are proven oil deposits and fewer political obstacles to development.
But the decades-long quest to find oil in the Arctic Refuge isn’t over. The largest oil and gas exploration program in the area’s history could soon begin — funded not by companies like ConocoPhillips or ExxonMobil but by an arm of the state of Alaska.
Alaska’s economic development corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, known as AIDEA, is launching its own, up-to-$175-million plan to search for fossil fuels beneath the refuge’s coastal plain, a sliver of tundra along the Arctic Ocean.
The state agency is the largest leaseholder in the refuge, having bought up more than 600 square miles since U.S. Congress opened the area to leasing in 2017. If AIDEA can acquire key permits, large trucks could roll across the frozen tundra as soon as next winter, shooting shockwaves deep underground to scan for oil reservoirs.
But the plan faces stiff blowback, and it’s stirring up debate about the future of the Arctic Refuge and spending decisions by AIDEA — a state-owned corporation that’s already under attack by opponents of its pro-resource extraction agenda.
AIDEA and its allies argue that its work will help prove the refuge contains vast amounts of oil, and could unleash a flood of corporate investment that would translate into jobs and state revenue for Alaska.
Critics, meanwhile, say that a state entity shouldn’t take on the role, and risk, of an oil company — spending big in an area where industry has refused to invest.
“They’re lone wolves out on the tundra, so to speak,” said Pat Pourchot, a former U.S. Department of Interior official who also once served as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.
AIDEA was one of only two participants in the latest federal lease sale, along with a small Alaska gas producer, HEX.
The two entities bid on just one-tenth of the acreage offered by the Trump administration.
“Very serious concerns about reporting on ANWR”
The exploration work that AIDEA now intends to fund is known as “3-D” seismic because it generates a three-dimensional image of rocks deep underground. That information would give analysts a much clearer and more detailed idea of what’s beneath the ground than older, 2-D data that was collected in the refuge in the 1980s.
The effort could yield crucial insight into the area’s oil potential, said Mark Myers, a former director of the U.S. Geological Survey who’s also worked as a top land manager for Alaska state government.
“You would need 3-D out there, quite clearly, to understand what’s under the ground,” Myers said. “Modern data will inform a lot.”
Promising results could attract oil companies — but there’s no guarantee the data will be positive, he added.
“Whether or not the oil is there is independent of what we want to believe,” Myers said.
Oil prospecting is speculative work, typically the domain of private investors and companies with technical expertise — and a willingness to sustain big expenses that don’t always pay off. Merely searching for oil in the Arctic can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and ramping up to production can cost billions.
While AIDEA has loaned money to other oil and gas companies before, it has never overseen its own Arctic exploration program. Its staff is not made up of petroleum geologists nor other technical experts typically employed by oil firms.
But in May, AIDEA’s governor-appointed board approved spending up to $175 million on the 3-D seismic testing, including “permitting and regulatory work.” It did not include money for drilling, which would typically come after seismic data has been collected.
Industry experts say that budget is higher than usual for a season of seismic work on the North Slope. But the resolution does not specify how long the project will last, and AIDEA is not obligated to spend all the money approved by the board.
In 2013, then-Gov. Sean Parnell’s administration proposed spending $50 million on oil exploration in the refuge, equivalent to some $70 million today when adjusted for inflation. But the Obama administration blocked that effort.
AIDEA has not released details about its effort to gather seismic data, and officials with the agency declined to answer questions or release basic information about it, including an expected timeline. The agency has not yet applied for key permits from the federal Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to spokespersons for those agencies.
“We’re advancing seismic. We’re advancing a drilling plan. We’re fighting the opponents of the project in the federal district court,” AIDEA Executive Director Randy Ruaro said at a board meeting last month.
Ruaro did not respond to questions seeking clarification about his comments, though in a previous email to Northern Journal, he expressed “very serious concerns about reporting on ANWR and bias.”
Some positive impacts of development of the refuge’s coastal plain “seem to get omitted from every story,” Ruaro added, pointing to potential revenue to state and local governments, royalties that oil producers would pay to the state and the resulting higher Alaska Permanent Fund dividend checks for state residents.
Ruaro also said media coverage tends to ignore “the unfair treatment of Kaktovik,” an Iñupiaq community inside the refuge whose leaders support development, as well as “intentional discrimination against Alaska and North Slope oil and gas development by banks and insurers instigated by the Gwich’in.”
Leaders of the Gwich’in, an Indigenous group in Alaska’s Interior and northwestern Canada, have long opposed drilling on the coastal plain. The area encompasses the calving grounds of a major caribou herd that migrates south into Gwich’in lands, where the animals are harvested for food.
“Advocating for our way of life does not discriminate against anyone, but it most certainly doesn’t discriminate against massive corporations with huge stores of wealth that are making decisions based on financial return and risks,” Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, wrote in an email to Northern Journal.
“We’re not going to do anything radical”
To lay the groundwork for its seismic program, AIDEA is spending $1 million on a contract with a subsidiary of the North Slope’s Indigenous-owned corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. — a longtime supporter of drilling in the refuge.
The subsidiary, ASRC Consulting and Environmental Services, is working on community outreach, environmental studies and permitting related to the seismic program, according to documents that Northern Journal obtained through a records request.
ASRC is also subcontracting with a Houston-based firm, SAExploration, that has been working on proposals for seismic testing in the refuge since 2018.
A spokesperson for the ASRC subsidiary referred Northern Journal to AIDEA for comment.
Under a separate, $70,000 contract with AIDEA, the ASRC subsidiary last year issued a glowing report on the coastal plain’s oil and gas potential.
The report described the refuge as the most promising unexplored area in North America — excluding offshore deposits — citing historical data and large new discoveries on state land nearby. Decades ago, the U.S. Geological Survey estimatedthat as many as 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil lie beneath the coastal plain.
While the Legislature oversees AIDEA’s annual operating budget, the agency’s finances are separate from other government funds — and only certain kinds of spending, like issuing bonds over a certain amount, require specific legislative approval.
Still, some lawmakers aren’t convinced that seismic testing in the refuge is the best use of AIDEA’s money
“I do think that the scale of some of these projects — the type of development that they pursue, and the lack of oversight on that development — does really raise questions about: What are our priorities as a state?” said Rep. Ashley Carrick, a Democrat from Fairbanks who chairs the House State Affairs Committee.
Carrick introduced a bill last year that would require legislative approval of AIDEA spending proposals over $100 million. It failed to advance.
Most of Alaska’s elected officials — as well as many Iñupiaq leaders in Kaktovik and across the North Slope — have pushed hard to open the Arctic Refuge to development, citing potential economic benefits.
One longtime proponent, Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said the recent lease sale results “were not surprising, given the acreage already leased and the continued partisan push against responsible development.”
Murkowski described the refuge as “basically unexplored,” suggesting that it could be similar to an oil-rich geologic formation, the Nanushuk, that was discovered only about a decade ago. That formation has since led to the industry’s revival in the petroleum reserve, to the west of the refuge.
The coastal plain’s “true prospectivity can only emerge as leaseholders move forward under a federal administration willing to work with them,” Murkowski said in a statement to Northern Journal.
The other petroleum company with leases in the refuge, HEX, has not announced plans for the area it acquired in the recent sale.
“I’m here as an Alaskan trying to be a responsible developer for Alaska, so we have opportunities in the future for our kids and my grandkids,” said John Hendrix, HEX’s chief executive.
HEX mostly produces natural gas in a different petroleum basin, Cook Inlet, near Anchorage. Hendrix declined to comment on the potential for partnering with AIDEA on development in the Arctic, but the two entities have worked together before. Two years ago, AIDEA opened a $50 million line of credit to HEX to fund the company’s drilling in Cook Inlet.
Hendrix described HEX’s foray into the Arctic as a way to diversify his business. He would not say if the company is already planning work on its leases — and if so, when it might happen.
“We’re a private company, and we keep that stuff tight to ourselves,” Hendrix said. “We’re not going to do anything radical. But we will do what we have to do to bring production forward.”
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