The Nations League is, at its core, a money grab. Replacing international friendlies with an ostensibly meaningful tournament is a sensible idea on paper, but UEFA’s (and later CONCACAF’s) main motivation for it was to wring more money out of the previously low-stakes, low-interest midseason international breaks. When taken in that context, it’s easy to dismiss the tournament as yet another monument to soccer’s ruling powers’ insatiable greed.
Since the competition itself has no historical relevance and little actual prestige, the attempts to juice these matches with Significance scan as pretty silly. An example: The Nations League semifinal between France and Spain was billed as a head-to-head showdown between Ousmane Dembélé and Lamine Yamal, two of last season’s most outstanding players, for no less than the Ballon d’Or itself. This is the type of pre-match hype that the Nations League, by its very existence, demands. It’s not important enough on its own, so there must be a manufactured narrative to make it matter.
It didn’t. Dembélé had an unremarkable game in an admittedly fun 5-4 thriller, and while Lamine helped Spain to victory with his penalty-aided brace, it’s hard to even imagine someone honestly thinking the result of a glorified friendly should tip the scales one way or the other for the BdO. Again, it was lots of fun watching these two teams trading blows-you can’t help but think the openness of the game was influenced in part by the tournament’s relative unimportance-and it’s always cool to see the best players going at it. There can be thrills in a match like this, but that’s about it. Case in point: Dembélé entered the match as the odds-on Ballon d’Or favorite, and remains so even after losing.
Really, that’s where the potential for a competition like the Nations League lies: in standout performances from the players themselves. Even if not particularly meaningful, these are serious contests in which everyone involved does earnestly try their best. And, at least by the time the semis and the final roll around, the matches do acquire some pretty major attention. This makes for a perfect platform for a player, maybe especially a somewhat overlooked one, to showcase their talent on a big stage.
With that, we come to Nuno Mendes, who was the star of Sunday’s final between Portugal and Spain, where the lusophones came out on top after a penalty shootout. While Cristiano Ronaldo still gets all of the headlines for Portugal, the 40-year-old was something of a goalscoring passenger on the Nuno Mendes train. The PSG full back can already claim to be the best at his position in the world, both in terms of honors-it’s hard to beat a treble and PSG’s first Champions League trophy-and individual performance. The Nations League final won’t go down as the most important match of his career, but it made for a nice instantiation of the 22-year-old’s excellence.
Mendes was elected the final’s man of the match, and rightfully so. He scored Portugal’s opener, and created the second off of a (deflected) cross that Ronaldo volleyed home from point-blank range. He was a terror for Spain on the left side of the Portuguese attack, constantly pinning Lamine back and forcing him to defend alongside Celta Vigo right back Óscar Mingueza. Their combined efforts were mostly futile. Mendes ended the match with the most successful dribbles of anyone, with four, in the process helping contain Spain’s most dangerous attacker by driving him deep into the wrong end of the pitch.
Mendes’s goal was a beauty. In the 26th minute, with Spain ahead 1-0, Mendes received the ball outside the Spanish box, took two touches to get some space, and then ripped a low screamer past Unai Simón and into the goal:
His “assist” for Ronaldo’s goal may have been a lucky deflection, but there was nothing lucky about the run that set it all up. In the 61st minute, with Portugal back down a goal thanks to Mikel Oyarzabal, Mendes latched onto the ball on the left wing with Lamine covering him. After briefly feinting towards the center of the park, he juked to his left and turned on the jets, blowing by the teenager and wrong-footing Mingueza, who was already out of position. By the time Mingueza caught back up inside the box, Mendes spotted his full-back partner Nelson Semedo charging into the center and attempted to hit the low cutback. Robin Le Normand was unlucky to place his foot in exactly the wrong place, as the ball bounced off of it and floated into the air, where Ronaldo was able to poach it into the net.
Neither of Portugal’s goals occur without Mendes, and that might become more true as he grows into his national team role as a veritable star. Despite being so young, Mendes already has 37 caps, and as his skills improve into his early prime, the Iberian side should better set him up to be what he was for his club this season: the best full back in the world.
Portugal ended up winning the match in large part due to Mendes-and also due to Álvaro Morata, who surprised exactly nobody when he failed to convert his spot kick in the penalty shootout, the only player on either team to do so-though he once again lost the spotlight to his legendary, and legendarily shameless, teammate. After the win, the cameras focused on Ronaldo as he tried his crocodilian damnedest to force some liquid out of his dormant tear ducts in an effort to create A Moment. Ronaldo, if nothing else, understands the power of artifice and narrative manipulation, and so it was fitting that international soccer’s most ersatz trophy went to the game’s most cyborgian superstar, who by sheer force of extravagant sentiment tried to will some Significance into his latest achievement.
But regardless of the dumb storylines about the Ballon d’Or coronation that wasn’t and Ronaldo’s smearing of GOATshit all over his face, the latter stages of this Nations League did offer some things of real value. There was the entertainment of Spain-France, Rayan Cherki’s breakout showing in that match, the impressive talent on display in the Spain-Portugal final, and especially the Mendes performance that stood above the rest. Whether or not anyone cares about or will even really remember the specifics of this match in a few months isn’t all that important. What does matter is that Nuno Mendes is out of this world, peerless at what he does, and has the ability to turn the final of a trumped-up tournament into a shining testament of his immense talent.
