From the London Palladium to Madrid’s Metropolitano, they’re all here. On Sunday night, the footballers who lifted the game’s biggest awards meet again three weeks later and on the field this time, dinner jackets but not a single man left behind. Harry Kane, the Ballon d’Or and Gerd Müller trophy winner. Unai Simón, holder of the Lev Yashin award. Luis de la Fuente, the coach of the year who on Thursday night announced that also joining them will be Lamine Yamal, the kid who lifted the Kopa award as the best young player for the third year running and said he would have preferred Pau Cubarsí to be standing there instead. And, yes, Cubarsí will be there too for the final Nations League group game.
At 1.45pm the world and European champions landed back at Madrid’s Barajas airport from Prague, where they had won again, before making their way by bus to their Las Rozas HQ, around the M40 motorway to the north-west of the capital. At about the same time, Lamine Yamal arrived from Barcelona, due in at midday. As was Mikel Oyarzabal, scorer of the winner at Euro 2024 and Spain’s top marksman this summer (not that he would ever tell you so) from San Sebastián. At 7.30pm, they trained, preparing to meet the World Cup semi-finalists and the team they defeated in Berlin at the end of Euro 2024. Two starters from the World Cup final will be absent: Dani Olmo and the captain, 2024 Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, are injured. But everyone else will be there.
“I’ve got good news,” De la Fuente said after a 2-0 victory over Czechia. “Lamine is in perfect condition and really looking forward to it and Mikel has just become a father; he will appreciate the chance to sleep.”
It is good news too, even if an absurd debate has dominated this international break regarding Lamine Yamal. In a country where there’s always a debate to be had even when there is none, where two clubs still come first even when the selección may again be the best ever, maybe it was inevitable. All the more so, perhaps, as Spain assimilates the idea that for the first time maybe they have the world’s best player now, with everything that brings, a single player sometimes dominating the agenda even around a team that is all about the collective. But that did not stop it infuriating De la Fuente.
It began when Lamine Yamal didn’t join the squad to prepare for the trip to Czechia, the door left open for him to return to face England in the game that really excited. Never mind that the same plan had been put into place with Oyarzabal, that during the last, four-game international break Lamine Yamal was the only player to play more than the 270-minute limit the manager had set, the accusation came that the teenager had been given preferential treatment.
There was context too, a previous disconnect between Barcelona and the federation over Lamine Yamal’s treatment and the demands made, with Hansi Flick complaining that Spain hadn’t taken care of him and De la Fuente expressing surprise at the lack of understanding from a man who had been a national team coach. Now, some claimed in columns and furious debates on television and radio, the country had given in to the club.
De la Fuente wasn’t having it, bemoaning the “sophists” out there. “The saddest, most lamentable thing there is in life is to speak without knowledge,” he said before the game in Prague. “I’m here to cast light. Lamine had some discomfort on his knee and a scan showed some liquid on his knee, so I took the decision that rather than coming here, travelling, he should rest, get treatment. I am optimistic he can join us on Friday. Is that clear?”
It was put to Spain’s coach that this was a bit unlike him, that he seemed unusually angry. “What upsets me are the lies, the things that are made up, the lack of rigour. And in the face of that, I rebel. So, maybe I said more than I would, but sometimes it is the only way to make people realise, to see. I cannot bear people who lie, who try to mislead.”
This was a public expression of something that has privately baffled De la Fuente at times. Besides, what’s the alternative? To leave Lamine Yamal and Oyarzabal out entirely? How can it be anything other than a good thing that he, that they, are available to play against England? Rather than preferential treatment, couldn’t this be interpreted as commitment, an effort to be there? How can there be a debate, how can there be any doubt, about a team in the place Spain are in?
There has never been a European champion like Spain were in Germany, winning every game and defeating four World Cup-winning countries; there may not have been a world champion as quietly superior as they were this summer either, anaesthetising France and Argentina. There has never been a team with a run like this, either, De la Fuente always keen to stress how insatiable they are, how their hunger remains intact.
Spain last lost 23 games ago – and that was on penalties against Portugal in the Nationals League final – and have not been beaten in 90 minutes for 43 matches.
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Spain are a team, a federation, with a clarity of idea and identity, an environment and continuity, that underlines that success is not chance and that it goes beyond this XI and this generation. Marc Roca offers an example among many: one of five new players in the squad, he has joined the seniors for the first time aged 29 but, like so many of his teammates, he worked with De la Fuente with the under-21s.
Martín Zubimendi offers another: at the World Cup he played 21 minutes, coming on in the final to run the game; at the Euros he was introduced in the final, too. Both times, he had to replace the best midfielder on earth; both times, it had the perfect ending. With Rodri absent again, this is another opportunity for an Arsenal player reduced to barely 100 Premier League minutes. “There are players who play better here than with their clubs,” De la Fuente said.
There is a line the coach is fond of repeating. “Rodri is the best midfielder in the world; Martín is the second best,” he said. Sure, that’s bias talking, faith, but when he insists, again and again, that his players are the best in the world they do then have a habit of backing him up. If Zubimendi is not the second-best midfielder in the world, if Rodri is not the best, Fabián Ruiz holds the Champions League and the World Cup.
And what of Pedri? If Simón had not lifted the Yashin award, surely David Raya would have. Besides, De la Fuente said: “Unai Simón is not just the best goalkeeper in the world, he is the best person in the world.” If Lamine Yamal was disappointed to win the Kopa, that was because Cubarsí deserved it and he thought the Ballon d’Or might have been his, which it surely will be one year soon.
The Euros and the World Cup suggest De la Fuente may be right, the run does too, and so did their night out at the Palladium. Only one of those men clutching prizes in London isn’t his, and he’s coming to Madrid on Sunday, the Metropolitano packed for as good a game as you can get anywhere, the teenager who may yet mark an entire generation joining them, too. So welcome once more, Harry. You’re in good company again.
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