Well, well, well. This is the victory of a way of doing things; the victory of a nation that decided 30 years ago that the way to exploit your traits – we’re not taller than most Europeans, we’re not stronger than most Europeans – was to use intelligence, technical ability, and the capacity to understand the game.
This comes on the back of a culture that has as heroes those that understand the game, those that can play the ball, dribble, or do something on the pitch that creates memories. We love that and, as a consequence, you create a lot of players in the streets and in the academies that do that.
Thirty years ago, the federation – with a guy that is not forgotten, but is not talked about much, in Inaki Saez – decided to use coaches and players with that profile.
Saez won the European Championship with the under-21s in 1998 and the under-19s in 2002, and won the World Youth Championship in 1999 with the under-20s with a generation of Iker Casillas and Xavi.
Eventually he became the national team coach but a lot of things have to happen to win a World Cup. Saez in the first team failed but his idea was followed by others, continued by other coordinators that he chose and the success of the youth sides reached the first team.
One of those was Luis Aragones, who said, ‘what are you good at? Passing, okay let’s get a lot of passers of the ball.’
That was 2008, where we won the Euros, and the rest is history. We lost our way a bit after 2010. Vicente del Bosque gave another chance at the next World Cup to a team that had already given everything.
But he had been so successful that we all allowed it in a way and now we have Luis de la Fuente, who had for 10 years experienced mixed results at youth level. He won the European Under-19 Championship in 2015 and the European Under-21 Championship in 2019 but there were several years of failing to qualify for the Finals.
But one thing he did do was started identifying players that were useful for that desired philosophy and took them with him to the under-19s, then the under-21s, and eventually when they were the given the opportunity to be in the first team, he knew who his people were. He knew how useful they were going to be.
{"embed_type":"genericarticlepod","payload":{"title":Football","button_link":"https://www.bet365.com/#/AS/B1/K%5E5/", "button_text":"View Latest Odds"}}Still, a lot of things have to happen for a team to win the World Cup. But Spain having this idea so deeply ingrained in their DNA has got an advantage on everybody else. They know that the wins will come.
De la Fuente has now played eight finals as a coach and won six.
Argentina defended extremely well in the final. It was very, very difficult for Spain, but by doing that, they couldn’t do the other part: attack better.
They had a couple of opportunities in extra time that could have gone differently, but I think Lionel Messi realised very early on that that was the case and there was frustration in his football. He knew that unless they got the ball they were never going to score.
As for Spain, there is so much to celebrate once again.
