If the Spanish Men’s National Team pulls off a World Cup victory on Sunday, the Spanish football federation would make history as the first to bring home successive World Cup championships on the men’s and women’s side in the history of the tournament.

The women’s team won the 2023 World Cup and will enter next year’s tournament in Brazil as defending champions. While the men’s team has been a perennial contender, appearing in 17 out of 23 World Cup tournaments, they last won the Trophy back in 2010.

The FIFA Women’s World Cup has had a much shorter history than its male counterpart; having started in 1991 compared to 1930 for the men. During that time, it has only had five different champions: the United States, Germany, Norway, Japan and Spain.

Only two of those teams, Germany and Spain, have also won the men’s World Cup.

The Spanish System

Spain has a robust men’s soccer league system, led by the Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, more commonly known as La Liga. Its teams are consistently among the top-ranked in Europe.

Real Madrid, based in the capitol, is one of the world’s most successful soccer clubs. FC Barcelona is the third-most valuable soccer club in the world, and Argentina’s Lionel Messi broke Brazilian legend Pelé’s record for most goals scored for a single club for the Catalonian team. Trips to Barcelona’s stadium, Camp Nou, have reached near-pilgrimage status for diehard soccer fans.

Spain’s players and officials celebrate with the trophy after winning the Australia and New Zealand 2023 Women’s World Cup final football match between Spain and England at Stadium Australia in Sydney on August 20, 2023.

Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images

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Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images

Spanish women’s soccer has lagged far behind, with both a league and a national team system plagued by poor coaching, underinvestment and abuse.

In 2015, the entire Women’s World Cup squad successfully called for the removal of coach Ignacio Quereda, whose leadership of the team since 1988 led many female players to accuse the Royal Spanish Football Federation of indifference to the women’s team. Even before the 2015 tournament, some longtime national team players said they refused to return to international duty as long as Quereda kept coaching.

In a 2021 documentary, “Romper el silencio,” players alleged Quereda sexually harassed and verbally abused them.

English writer Jem Calder’s debut novel, I Want You To Be Happy, reports from the frontlines of modern-day dating. His book is good – but the news is not.

A man in his mid-30s who recently broke off his engagement with his longtime girlfriend meets a young woman at a crowded London bar. He’s a copywriter, she’s a 23-year-old barista. Despite his intention not to talk about his breakup, he finds himself “shouting specific details directly in her ear.” “Pretty intense,” she yells back. He apologizes. “No-no, I like it,” she yells. “It’s like boarding a plane. You go baggage first.”

Neither can think what to say next. After an “interpersonal silence containing all the bar-noise,” they share a few drinks, their first names (Chuck and Joey), some quips about their 12 year age gap and her lack of what he calls “a real job.” They end up at his luxury apartment, which is far nicer than her crowded shared flat.

In other words, Calder’s characters have boarded a plane, baggage first — with no idea where it will land. Will it lead to an actual relationship, nevermind happiness?

Calder made a splash with his first book, Reward System, a collection of six interconnected short stories about young adults linked by social media yet adrift and alienated in today’s fragmented digital world. The title of one story, “Distraction from Sadness is Not the Same Thing as Happiness,” could also work for this closely observed, sad-but-sympathetic novel about the cagey, jittery dance that characterizes the modern-day mating game.

Chuck and Joey are guarded and uncertain. We get to know them better than they get to know each other — their insecurities and disappointments with themselves as well as others. Their fundamental imbalances — age, financial, commitment levels — lead to a wobbly connection. The discovery that they share literary aspirations (poetry for her, prose for him) and write around their day jobs opens up the potential for some sort of bond. Their nascent relationship stirs “a dormant feeling of possibility” in both of them. But a talent gap opens up an abyss. (I won’t say who has more.)

Joey is hopeful, always on stand-by for texts: “A new person finding you interesting makes you feel new,” she ruminates in this tight, third person narrative that alternates between the male and female perspective. Interestingly, although the author is male, the female character comes across as far more sympathetic.

We’d progressed from walking in the park to perching across from each other in my living room to sitting side by side on the family room sofa. It was grief that drew us. A year earlier we’d both lost our beloved, vibrant spouses to cancer. Though his wife and I had been in the same women’s book group, I’d known Eric only through the wry gripes we’d all made about our husbands.

Now he took my face in his hands. Here it comes, I thought. Was I ready for this? Looking deep into my eyes he asked, “Would you nap with me?”

Apparently, this was what dating looked like in one’s 60s. As he snored companionably, I wondered how I’d handle our next progression, whatever that would be. My husband had devotedly nursed me through my own illness, only to be hit by one far worse. We and our two sons had been the closest of families, their father their best friend. As much as I knew they needed me, I was racked by survivor’s guilt — ashamed still to be alive. If I was mortified just to breathe, how could I even think about loving another man?

For months, Eric and I lurked about. Although he lacked the sense I had that we were cheating on our spouses, we both felt we were somehow cheating on our children. That his one child and my two were often at our respective homes made for tricky logistics. So we leased new life from the city.

Guided by Eric, we watched planes from the viewing deck at the Santa Monica Airport, where he explained Bernoulli’s principle. We wandered the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market, where he introduced me to the vendors he’d known for decades and taught me to top berry trays with tiny nets he’d made to hold the fruit in place. We saw L.A. Theater Works record plays at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall, where the primal storytelling of actors reading lines and Foley artists adding sounds riveted me more than a Broadway spectacle. On these outings, I learned not just about flight, farm-to-table and fabulism, but about Eric. He was a man fully engaged in life.

Guided by me, we took classes at Santa Monica Yoga, Eric treating himself afterward to a sandwich at Bob’s Market from the deservedly self-proclaimed Deli Lama. We walked our way through my L.A.-on-foot book, from Castellammare and Leimert Park to Pasadena, delighting in the architectural mashup Nathanael West derided in “The Day of the Locust” as “Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas” and “Egyptian and Japanese temples.” Eric especially admired the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills, the Shakespeare Bridge in Franklin Hills and the stained glass windows in Carthay Circle. He learned not just about poses, pastrami and parapets, but about me. I was a woman fully engaged in life.

We also learned we were both determined to seize the day after seeing the rest of our spouses’ days seized from them. My guilt persisted. But this good man had found a route from the sofa to the city to my heart.

We finally met each other’s children. The days we seized became weeks, months and years. Our sons, though forever brokenhearted, thrived. Mine had children of their own, all with names that begin with “A” to honor their father. The oldest, at four, understands from photos that she has another grandpa, understands that the man in the picture is her daddy’s daddy. Her parents and I tell her about him: his kindness, grace, humor, wisdom. “I wish I could have known him,” she says.

“I do too,” I say, “more than anything.” When the others are old enough, we’ll tell them, too, about him. They’ll feel his essence because their fathers are just like him. He’ll stay, this way, in and around us.

Ever-gracious, Eric holds this space for him, as I try to do for his wife with their son. But becoming a grandmother only increased my guilt. My husband, consummate family man, was born to be a grandfather. Yet here I was, without him, flying high on the joy of grandparenting. What could I do besides love the children and grandchildren fiercely and be grateful for the privilege?

I could do this: recognize that if it takes a village to raise a child, the more villagers who love the child the better. My lucky grandchildren will feel their grandfather’s love by proxy and Eric’s love firsthand. They can even enjoy the love of Eric’s son, who patiently helps them build Lego worlds and cooks them their favorite soup.

Even as he holds space for my husband, Eric affectionately fills his own. He’s a tall man with a deep voice, an easy laugh and a warm embrace. He marvels at the latest evidence of the grandchildren’s genius, like any grandfather should, and spoils them with treats and toys. He’s so handy around their houses that my grandson greets him with, “What’re you gonna fix today?”

His most recent project involved the crib my husband and I had saved from our sons’ infancy with the hope that grandchildren would one day use it. Since the distance between slats was now deemed unsafe, Eric transformed the crib into blocks. “I wanted to honor the spirit of what you’d both wished for,” he said.

Then and now. Loss and gain. Selfless love.

For years now, Eric and I have both lived in my house. There are still naps, but more bustle. Our sons live close enough that we’re together a lot, and my house tends to be the happy hub. The grandchildren play near photos of their grandpa. Their “A” names ring out in this home where we raised their fathers. Meanwhile, Eric pulls them around on a rug he rigged as a magic carpet and helps stack the blocks into towers. When the grandchildren leave, he hugs them tight. My guilt remains, like pain in a phantom limb, but the sofa holds us all.

The author is a law school professor, researcher and author of an upcoming book on the scientifically proven neural superpowers of grandmothers. She lives on the Westside. She’s on Instagram @rondafoxwrites, and her website is rondafox.com.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.