The flight from Bilbao to Mexico City had taken eleven hours and forty-two minutes, and Iñaki Uranga had not slept for a single one of them. At 73, with two replaced knees and a pacemaker that beeped softly when his heart rate climbed, he had no business making such a journey. His cardiologist had said so, twice. His wife had said so, three times. But when the World Cup draw placed Spain in Mexico City, Iñaki had bought three tickets before the lottery closed. "He has waited thirty-six years to feel this again," his daughter Leire, 44, told a reporter outside the terminal. "He is not going to wait another thirty-six." What Iñaki had waited to feel was the precise sensation that had seized him on a July evening in 2010, when a slender midfielder from La Mancha had struck a ball in the 116th minute of a final in Johannesburg and sent an entire country into a delirium that lasted a week. Iñaki had been 39 then. He had carried his father on his shoulders through the streets of Getxo. His father, who had grown up under a dictatorship that had forbidden the Catalan and Basque flags, had wept in the public square for the first time in his life. Now, three decades later, walking slowly through the concourse of the Estadio Azteca on the arm of his teenage grandson Unai, Iñaki felt the same electricity in the air - but it carried a different frequency. The Spanish side of 2026 was not the inheritance of that golden generation; it was something newer, younger, stranger. A roster that included a 7-foot NBA forward who had grown up in the Canary Islands and learned the game on outdoor courts in Las Palmas. A midfielder who had been a ball boy at the 2010 celebrations in Madrid and now wore the shirt himself. "Abuelo," Unai said, gripping his grandfather's arm tighter as they found their seats, "this is the same stadium where Maradona scored, isn't it?" Iñaki smiled. "The very same. And tonight, someone else will write their name on these walls." The match that followed was not perfect. Spanish sides rarely are, despite the reputation for tiki-taka. But when the breakthrough came - a curling effort from outside the box that sent the Azteca into a frenzy of visiting red and gold - Iñaki Uranga closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him. He did not need to see the goal. He had been hearing it, in one form or another, for thirty-six years.

"Back of the Net!"