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MUMBAI: Oliver Kahn was midway through explaining why Spain had become the World Cup’s most complete team when his phone rang.

“Let’s get down, let’s get down to business…” blared Tiesto’s ‘The Business’. Kahn smiled, silenced the call and resumed exactly where he had left off.

It was an apt soundtrack for a man whose career was built on precision and pragmatism. Yet throughout this World Cup, one question has continued to bother the legendary German goalkeeper. “How do you stop Spain?” “I always asked myself during the tournament, ‘How will you beat this team?’” said Kahn, part of Zee5’s expert panel for the FIFA World Cup . “Maybe Argentina, with their strong mentality, could do it. But overall, Spain deserve to be in the final.”

For Kahn, Spain’s rise has been less about dazzling from the outset and more about peaking at the right time. “I think Spain is a typical example of how you build up during a tournament,” he said. “Sometimes it’s better to come slowly into a tournament, get better game by game, and that’s exactly what Spain did.”

What has impressed him most is Spain’s evolution under Luis de la Fuente . “This is not the tiki-taka football anymore. Sometimes that football became a little bit boring because it wasn’t vertical enough.”

“He refined the game. It’s more vertical. It’s more attacking.”

Former England and Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler has noticed the same shift. “They’re a possession-based team, but it’s not possession for the sake of it,” Fowler said. “It’s possession with a purpose of playing forward.”

That, he believes, is Spain’s best chance of stopping Lionel Messi .
“They’ll try to control the ball, control areas of the pitch and stop Argentina from having possession. That’s a great defensive attribute.”

While the final has been billed as Messi versus teenage sensation Lamine Yamal , Kahn sees no passing of the torch. “I don’t see any rivalry. Messi is the role model of Yamal. They come from the same academy.”
Yamal has impressed, he added, but “he can play much better, as he does at Barcelona where he has a little bit more freedom.”

Messi, though, remains football’s ultimate problem. “We’ll all sit here and try to stop Messi,” Fowler said. “But the crux of it is you can’t because he’s Messi and he’s probably the greatest player that’s ever been.”

England came closest in the semifinal before dropping deeper, allowing Messi to influence the game. “You stop Messi from getting into the pockets,” Fowler said. “But when you start dropping deep, that’s when he comes into his own.”
Both legends believe modern football’s obsession with tactics and analytics should not overshadow instinct and mentality. “We should not overrate tactics,” Kahn said. “In the knockout stages you need tactics, the right players and the right mentality.”

He pointed to Argentina as proof. “Everybody knows their role, but at the end you need human beings with great mentality inside your tactical system.”

As a goalkeeper, Kahn also believes the final could hinge on the men between the posts. He describes Spain’s Unai Simon as calm and dependable, while Argentina’s Emiliano Martínez brings “great presence, enormous reflexes and the conviction that he is one of the best goalkeepers in the world.”

Kahn knows better than most how decisive a goalkeeper can be. His mistake in the 2002 World Cup final against Brazil still lingers. “It took a long time to recover,” he admitted. “I played six and a half games perfectly without any mistakes. Then there was only one small mistake, and it was over.”

Perhaps that explains why he refuses to glorify individuals. “If Martínez hadn’t made that save in the 119th minute in 2022 (WC final), Messi would not be a world champion,” Kahn said. “I’m not a friend of only talking about the superstars.”

Instead, he sees Sunday’s final as a clash of footballing philosophies. “This game is a match between rational guys playing super-smart football against fully emotional, aggressive guys playing a totally different style.”

And despite spending an entire tournament searching for flaws, Kahn is still left with the same question. “I’ve asked myself the whole tournament: how is Spain beatable?” On Sunday night, Argentina will try to answer it.