By Cheché Vidal
(This is the fourth article in Dribbli Ethosport’s special series on the FIFA World Cup 2026: an analytical record of the tournament’s institutional decisions and ethical conduct, written from my role as a Council Member of the CIFP.)
(Prefer to listen? The audio version of this article is available in the player below.)
You can read the Case Evaluation Report for this article here.
La versión en español de este artículo está disponible aquí.
As a Council Member of the International Committee for Fair Play (CIFP), I have challenged myself to study, better understand, and attempt to recognize Fair Play in the world’s major sporting competitions — an effort I have further strengthened through the creation and coordination of the newly formed Fair Play Academic Circle (FPAC) of the CIFP, a group of sports philosophers dedicated to deepening this area of study. And having just lived through another football World Cup, I’ve set myself the same challenge with this particular tournament — a competition I know very well: I was Vice President of its organizing committee in 1994 and, later, led FIFA.com’s coverage across aeveral additional World Cups. It’s a tournament in which the subject becomes even more interesting, since FIFA has its own Fair Play recognition system (see the official announcement here).
With this article, and the analysis that accompanies it, my interest is to examine and elevate the meaning and selection criteria of that award, something I believe is worth approaching from an independent perspective specialized in that third, important dimension of modern sport, one I try to bring as a CIFP member: a fuller view that incorporates, alongside the disciplinary count, other decisive factors: sportspersonship and virtuous competitiveness, that make Fair Play something broader than the mere record, or absence, of disciplinary sanctions.
To that end, within the FPAC, the circle I coordinate inside the CIFP, we have been developing our own philosophical and analytical framework, conceived not only to understand this third ethical dimension of sport, but also to measure it with precision, in a way that aspires to inspire athletes, referees, officials, and fans to pursue the best of themselves in that arena. It is precisely that framework, in its football-adapted version, that I apply in the analysis accompanying this article.
Seen through that broader lens, the 2026 World Cup offers a revealing case study. FIFA awarded its Fair Play Award to the Netherlands, the team with the fewest cards in the tournament. It’s an honest answer, but, viewed through this modern philosophical framework, one that can be improved. And this is the story of why.
Four Matches, Eight Matches
The Netherlands played four matches and were eliminated in the round of 32, on penalties, against Morocco. Spain played eight, every match a team can possibly play in a World Cup, all the way to lifting the trophy. Four matches and eight do not offer the same opportunities to commit a foul, lose one’s patience, or receive a card. Rewarding discipline without accounting for how much time, and against which opponents, each team had to lose it, risks confusing virtue with the luck of having exited the tournament early.
In fact, when cards received are measured against minutes played and matches contested, as detailed in the analysis accompanying this article, Spain sustained a disciplinary efficiency practically equivalent to that of the Netherlands across the entire competition, not just during the much shorter stretch the Dutch team managed to play.
Spain finished the tournament with six yellow cards and no reds, spread across six different players over two months of competition: Pedri, Baena, Ferran Torres, Cubarsí, Laporte, Cucurella. None booked twice. No expulsions. There wasn’t a single card in the win over Austria. And there wasn’t a single card in the final, one hundred twenty minutes of the highest pressure this sport offers.
Beyond the Cards
But limiting the view to cards, even well-counted cards, would fall short. Fair Play, in the fullest sense defended here, includes sportspersonship, how rivals treat one another, and virtuous competitiveness, that disposition to compete with all possible intensity without eroding respect for the opponent, for the sport itself, or for the fans. And on that ground, the 2026 World Cup was not the exception of a single team: it was, from start to finish, a tournament remarkably generous in gestures of that kind.
The most eloquent example, outside the final itself, came in the third-place match. England and France played the highest-scoring match of the entire tournament, a thrilling 6-4 in England’s favor, without the referee showing a single card in ninety minutes, despite the intensity of the result. Afterward, players from both teams, Saka, Guehi, Eze, and Chalobah for England; Upamecano, Lacroix, and Mateta for France, gathered in a joint prayer circle on the pitch itself, a gesture that traveled the world precisely because of its spontaneity: no one organized it; it simply happened, among rivals who, ninety minutes earlier, had competed with everything they had.
That kind of gesture, competing at full intensity and then, once the match ends, recognizing the rival as an equal, appeared again and again at this World Cup. It was, in that sense, a tournament that paid constant tribute to sportsmanship, even when the result hurt.
The Case of Norway
Norway offers, in this regard, an especially instructive case. It sustained an even lower disciplinary record than Spain and the Netherlands, three yellow cards in six matches, no reds, on a run that saw it eliminate Brazil in the round of 16 before falling to England in the quarterfinals, in extra time.
That record came paired with genuine gestures: minutes after Brazil’s elimination, Vinícius Júnior interrupted Erling Haaland’s live television interview to embrace him spontaneously; and after Norway’s own elimination, Haaland and Jude Bellingham, former Borussia Dortmund teammates, embraced warmly, while Bellingham waited for Norwegian goalkeeper Ørjan Nyland so they could walk off the pitch together. Norwegian fans, for their part, seemed to follow that same example: they brought creativity and entertainment to their support, like the viral “Viking Row” phenomenon, and, perhaps influenced by that same culture, welcomed their eliminated team back with recognition and warmth.
There is, however, a difference I consider decisive. Spain sustained its conduct not across four matches, nor six, but eight, the same eight in which it accumulated 22 of a possible 24 points, under mounting pressure and rising opponent quality at every round, up to the most demanding match possible: the final itself. Norway, with all the merit of its own run, was not put through that ultimate test. It is that combination, more points, more pressure, the same character sustained to the very last instant— that sets Spain’s case apart.
What Sets Spain Apart
And it was Spain, precisely in the highest-pressure match of all, that best sustained that spirit through to the final minute. That last detail matters because, in that same match, under that same pressure, the opponent offered the perfect contrast: FIFA opened a disciplinary investigation, still ongoing, into the opposing team’s reactions after the final whistle.
And yet, in the middle of those reactions, Lamine Yamal, after calmly praying on the pitch, approached Lionel Messi, and the two fell into a sincere embrace, despite everything happening around them, an image many read as the symbolic passing of the torch between two generations. It wasn’t the only gesture of its kind: several other Spanish players separately approached to embrace Messi, in what the sports press described as a show of respect that transcended the result. And at the awards ceremony, Spain formed a guard of honor and applauded Argentina as it received its silver medals. Argentina, by contrast, turned its back on the new champions as they received their gold.
Days later, Luis de la Fuente, who, at 65, became the oldest coach to win a World Cup, summed up what had happened with a simplicity that said more than it seemed to: “In the past people were surprised that footballers were talented and skillful and good people. We are the most united team, and that’s thanks to having people with solidarity, with values,” he said. And he added: “I am very proud of this generation of footballers who have grown up with this philosophy, who have stayed true to it, who have made it even better, and who have set an example as a team and as a family.”
He didn’t mention Greek areté. He didn’t need to: he was describing it.
The Fair Measure
That same vision, the one Spain exemplified throughout the entire competition, is perhaps the most significant thing about this ethical dimension of the 2026 World Cup. Because a count that doesn’t distinguish between the team that competed four times and the one that competed eight doesn’t measure character: it measures opportunity. And an award that only registers disciplinary cards leaves out the other half of the story, the positive half, not just the tally of the negative, the sportsmanship with which a team treats its rival, and the virtuous competitiveness with which it sustains its discipline under mounting pressure.
And it is precisely for that reason that FIFA, following the example of other international sports bodies such as the International Olympic Committee, could benefit from a collaboration with the CIFP, the institution devoted to Fair Play in world sport, to refine the measurement and precision of that ethical dimension Fair Play represents for its sporting discipline, and, above all, to promote it with the urgency today’s world demands.
That recommendation is reinforced when we consider that, as I develop in my earlier article, titled “To Measure Is Not to Judge,” technology and data measure; they do not judge. Here, happily, the numbers, read with the rigor they deserve, and the character observed on the pitch tell the same story: Spain did not merely crown itself world champion by piling up victories and playing excellent football; it did so, moreover, by demonstrating a dignity, a character, and an excellence that only the champions of Fair Play can achieve.
For all of this, I consider Spain’s case at the 2026 World Cup to be a solid candidate for the full recognition of Fair Play, and, above all, for that specific dimension of its competitive character we call here Virtuous Competitiveness, or Areté: not the isolated gesture of a single instant, but the character that sustains itself, match after match, to the very end. Spain is, in my judgment, the team that deserves the true Fair Play Award of this World Cup.
And having won that title on the pitch, with the ball as the only judge, is what makes Spain a double champion: champion by footballing merit, champion by character. Both titles, at the same time. Both, deserved.