the reason Spain have only won by narrowest margins isn’t because they are a poor team, but rather because they are so good that other teams defend with 10 men. And taking down a wall of 10 players is very difficult (just ask the teams that played against Inter Milan this season); so in the end even if you win by 1 goal that’s good enough.
Just look all opponents of Spain’s:
Switzerland were defending 90 mins and got one lucky break.
Honduras were playing only to defend, same holds for Chili.
Paraguay were the only team that played with attacking incentives, and this is the only game where Spain got lucky not to lose.
Portugal were defending all the time and hoped for something special from Ronaldo
Germany weren’t able to get a touch on the ball and kept 9/10 players back.
And now in the final Holland too - despite being the only team that could match Spain on paper - played with the intention of breaking up play and rough tackling and hope for Sneijder/Robber/vPersie to do something, and they almost succeeded.
this goes to show you how afraid all teams were to play against Spain and employed a tactic of ‘not losing’ rather than ‘trying to win’. Your example of Brazil crushing Chili is because Chili played a bit more attacking against them than against Spain, because they sensed chances against them which they didn’t against Spain.
So in the end, winning by a small margin in football is something totallyyyyy different from winning with a small margin in cricket.
Btw, Holland never won by a big margin either (apart from against Denmark, where one of the goals was an own-goal):
Demark 2-0
Japan 1-0
Cameroon 2-1
Slovakia 2-1
Brazil 2-1
Uruguay 3-2