Vignettes of some sports shows unfold in quite interchangeable order. Spain’s 2-0 dismantling of France in the first semi-final of this expanded World Cup on Tuesday came as an elegant dissection of the abstract with unstoppable sincerity and tireless determination.Taken at face value, the challenge of facing France really seemed too imposing and dizzyingly abstract a puzzle for any team to solve. They were the team to beat, an attacking magnate who crushed one opponent after another with utter disdain. The stage was evidently set for Didier Deschamps and Kylian Mbappe’s Les Bleus to embrace immortality. Yet it ended up being only a possibility because Spain came and injected into such a French idea of domination an irresistibly powerful contradiction with its own sense of La Furia.An uncharacteristically banal France met its match in an incredibly beautiful Spain. A France entered the examination room with a superior class scowl and suddenly saw in an incremental confusion. In Spain, perhaps a little detached from all this chaos before the match, he became ecstatic with the joy of passing the test with perfect skill.The arc of flipping the narrative was essentially evoked through the pages of Johan Cruyff’s book so embedded in the psyche of Spanish football. It was a triumph sketched in triangles.Cruyff’s obsession with possession led him to develop a model based on triangles. Regardless of his position on the field, a player must position himself to continue forming geometric shapes, thus allowing him to offer a teammate more than one passing option. “It’s not the man on the ball who decides where the ball goes, but the players without the ball,” the Dutch legend – the focal point of Rinus Michels’ Total Football – once said.The arrival of Cruyff in Catalonia first as a player and then as a coach of FC Barcelona sprinkled the stardust of this idea in the mental space of Spanish football and he continued to form his “dream team” project. It has since changed hands – from Pep Guardiola to Vicente del Bosque to Luis Enrique and now Luis de la Fuente. Since the triumph of geometry has been the business card in Spain. He provoked debate, entertained and even engaged his audience but was never abandoned. France, entering the contest as heavy favourites, may have played their worst game at the worst moment of this World Cup, but they still couldn’t face Spain at their dazzling best at a more inappropriate time. Mbappe and his entourage were thought and fought in every aspect of the game and there could be no real complaints for the 2018 World Cup winning manager Deschamps.Before the passing masterclass of Spain with all those demonstrations of Euclidean geometry, Mbappe remained in a stagnant space throughout the match and, as if drawn towards a black hole, his ethereal speed was sucked into the surrounding nothingness.Everything seemed to be in place for Spain, as Lamine Yamal won a penalty after drawing a foul from French defender Lucas Digne and Mikel Oyarzabal was perfect from the spot to become the third Spanish player to score five goals in a single World Cup, after David Villa (2010) and Emilio Butragueno (1986).It was, however, the second goal that sparked a life in the team’s tiki-taka theater with all its magic and mystique. It was the result of a build-up that started with the goalkeeper Unai Simon and culminated in Dani Olmo releasing Pedro Porro with a sumptuous pass and the French defender controlling and finishing with the confidence of a close No. 9.Does Spain ever get bored of their style?Of course, it has its depth of shadow and sometimes it feels like a burden in itself. Who could forget how the system dissolved into a suffocating cul-de-sac during the 2018 World Cup that resulted in a shock Round of 16 elimination against Russia after and enjoyed 74% possession. The agony was repeated four years later when Spain lost to Morocco in another penalty shootout in the knockouts.Spain’s defeat to Morocco in Qatar led the federation to replace coach Luis Enrique with De la Fuente, then in charge of the team under 21. After spending years in the country’s youth system, De la Fuente inherited that shocking identity of a team that is easier to analyze, but increasingly difficult to defeat and infused it with the mentality of the winner.There are times when art doesn’t need to defeat anyone. This is when the game rises and transcends the result.