La Liga has the most players in the World Cup final. It’s no surprise to the league’s president

When Spain and Argentina meet in the World Cup final, no domestic competition will be better represented than La Liga. Spain’s top flight is home to 24 finalists, 18 Spain internationals and six Argentina players.

For La Liga’s president Javier Tebas, that is no coincidence.

“I believe our (Spanish) football pyramid is the best in the world,” Tebas told The Athletic. The numbers are evidence of something larger than one unusually successful tournament.

“Whether they are still playing in La Liga or elsewhere, they were all developed within our football pyramid. It produces players with technical quality, competitiveness and physical preparation.”

Spain’s run to the final has largely been powered by players developed within its domestic academy system. Argentina, meanwhile, has also benefited from La Liga’s talent pipeline. Spanish clubs have spent decades identifying and developing Argentine players, most famously Lionel Messi, who joined Barcelona at 13 to enter the club’s renowned La Masia academy.

Spain’s academy system has long been admired, but Tebas argues its success extends beyond famous institutions such as Barcelona’s La Masia or Real Madrid’s La Fabrica. He points instead to the structure beneath them: a nationwide network of academies, coaching education and competitive pathways that keeps young players in Spain instead of losing them abroad.

“Our clubs, and even many non-professional clubs, have invested enormously in academies, facilities and player education,” he said. “Young players want to stay and develop in Spanish football. That is an important factor.”

La Liga’s strict financial controls reinforce the philosophy.

Unlike the Premier League, whose clubs have routinely posted significant losses while continuing to spend heavily in the transfer market, Tebas believes La Liga’s financial fair play rules force clubs to develop talent rather than simply buy it.

“Clubs know they cannot compete by wasting money,” Tebas said. “That encourages them to work on their academies because they know that’s how they remain competitive.”

The same philosophy, he argues, now extends to the women’s game. Spanish coaches continue to spread throughout Europe and beyond, while Spain’s women’s national team and clubs such as Barcelona have become global powers.

“It isn’t a coincidence,” Tebas said. “It’s the result of continuous work.”

The same footballing ecosystem that produced Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi and Dani Olmo has also developed coaches now winning titles across Europe and executives tasked with delivering one of the world’s biggest sporting events. In 2030, that model will face its biggest test yet when the World Cup returns to Spain.

The tournament will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco, but Spain will stage the majority of the matches and host most of the teams’ training bases.

Tebas believes the tournament will showcase more than the country’s ability to produce elite footballers. It will also put on display how dramatically Spain’s club infrastructure has evolved over the past decade.

Much of that transformation is traced back to La Liga’s controversial agreement with CVC Capital Partners signed in 2021. Under the deal, Spanish clubs gained access to roughly $2.4 billion (€2 billion) in funding, while CVC takes home an estimated 8.25 percent share of La Liga’s audiovisual revenues for the next 50 years. The agreement was not unanimous, however. Real Madrid and Barcelona were among the major clubs that rejected the arrangement and chose not to participate.

The deal injected much-needed capital into Spanish clubs with a caveat: roughly 70 percent of that funding was earmarked for infrastructure and accelerated technological upgrades rather than player transfers. League executives say it would otherwise have taken two decades to achieve La Liga’s long-term international expansion in an increasingly competitive global football market.

Thanks to CVC’s cash injection, Spain’s World Cup preparations have been driven largely by private capital rather than taxpayers. From Valencia’s long-awaited new stadium to renovations in Celta Vigo, Zaragoza and Sevilla, projects accelerated thanks to CVC funds.

“I remember the Spanish government asking me how much public money would be needed to renovate the stadiums,” Tebas said. “I told them: zero. That money should go to roads, hospitals and schools.”

CVC’s investment also gave banks and institutional investors confidence that Spanish football represented a stable long-term investment. “Without CVC, I think it would have been impossible,” Tebas said. “It made banks and investment funds believe in clubs beyond Real Madrid and Barcelona. The funds are coming. I think the World Cup is confirming that trend.”

Beyond bricks and mortar, La Liga’s centralized technology platform will also play an important role in the tournament. “People do not realize that La Liga controls the entire stadium-access system,” Tebas said. Across the stadiums now being renovated, everything from access control and ticketing to lighting, LED displays and audiovisual systems is coordinated through La Liga subsidiaries. The model allows clubs to modernize their venues while creating a more consistent experience for supporters across the league. Those systems will be used during the World Cup.

One of the biggest questions surrounding the 2030 World Cup is where the final will be played. Tebas believes it belongs in Spain.

“The project originally began with Spain and Portugal, and the understanding was always that the final would be in Spain,” he said. “We should host the final.”

In addition to Portugal, Spain will host the tournament with Morocco, while Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay will each host opening matches.

“The problem is FIFA and the way it operates,” he said, carefully separating his criticism of FIFA from his view of Morocco. “FIFA takes advantage of the ambitions of countries that want to grow through football and uses those circumstances to bring them into these arrangements.”

As Spain prepares to host the tournament, the event itself may look very different. The 2026 World Cup, which concludes this weekend in the United States, is the first to feature 48 teams. Yet FIFA president Gianni Infantino has already floated the possibility of expanding the competition again, to 64 nations for the 2030 edition.

For Tebas, bigger is not necessarily better.

He believes World Cup expansion affects far more than the game’s biggest stars. While concerns about player workload are real, the greater impact falls on the broader football economy. Every additional international match takes dates away from domestic leagues, reducing the value of broadcast rights, ticket sales and commercial revenue. “These FIFA executives, some CONMEBOL executives and sometimes UEFA executives are destroying the domestic leagues,” he said. “It is unbelievable that these officials do not think about the consequences of their decisions.

“I always say that most of these senior football executives have never run a football club.”