15-J: the day the guillotine changed into a catapult for Luis de la Fuente

As the year ended, especially after what happened after the final of the Women's World Cup, it is difficult to believe that there was a moment in which the big decision of the Spanish Football Federation was to give continuity or not to a coach, Luis de la Fuente, who had debuted three months ago. We are on June 14 of this year. Silence surrounds the surroundings of the Landhuishotel De Bloemenbeek, a discreet and charming hotel in the middle of nowhere, 17 kilometers from Enschede, the city where the next day, the 15th, the national team plays against Italy in the semifinal of the Nations League.

«Why are we going to fool ourselves?. If we had lost that game, I think Luis de la Fuente would not have continued.”. This is said by one of the people who was closest to the outlawed Luis Rubiales during his entire mandate, someone who was close to the now former president that June 14. Things had been bad for three months, just the period between this moment and the coach's debut.

Month of March. Luis de la Fuente, Rubiales' surprising bet to say goodbye to Luis Enrique, took charge of the senior team after more than a decade achieving success with the youth teams. His age (61 then, 62 now) and his lack of experience in top-level clubs made him suspicious in the eyes of the most elitist.. Everything started more or less well, with a relatively comfortable victory against Norway (3-0, although two of the three goals came very late and after the Nordics, who played in Malaga without Haaland, wereted several clear options). But three days later, the Glasgow match arrived.. Luis de la Fuente turned the team upside down. He changed eight of 11 players (Kepa, Rodrigo and Mikel Merino barely repeated) and the mess that the team had in Hampden Park was one of those that stings.

However, what stood out the most was a phrase in the subsequent press conference: «I have told the players that this is the way. We are going to grow, for sure.”. In that room, the looks of the journalists who usually cover the information on the Spanish team drew an incredulity that, in some way, advanced what would come later: that distrust of the person who had named him in Luis de la Fuente just before starting that match against Italy, we return to June, on the 15th.

However, that day Spain plays a good game. Not against a great rival, since Italy barely has the name left to scare the staff, but a convincing match, resolved with a goal from Joselu – the proper name of this new stage, perhaps along with Rodrigo – with just a few minutes left. for the end. That victory turned a guillotine into a catapult, because since June 15, everything has been good news for the coach and his boys.. Three days later, on Sunday the 18th, in Rotterdam, Spain lifted its first trophy in many years.. In a very tough final against Croatia, which clung to the game like a tick, the team offered signs of experience, poise, security…. A good handful of those intangibles as necessary as quality or talent to win in this sport called football.

The national coach, Luis de la Fuente. EFE

He knew how to hold his own against a veteran group and, although it had to be on penalties, Spain, eleven years after the 2012 Euro Cup, won a title again. A title whose pedigree is still minuscule, but a title for which, after all, it was necessary to overcome Italy and a Croatia that was a finalist in the World Cup in Russia and a semi-finalist in Qatar, upset by Spain in the round of 16 in the Euro 2021. That trophy, raised by the last vestige of the golden era, Jordi Alba, gave way to a team that has won (and scored in some) all its games since then, showing a structure where eight or nine names from De la Fuente's eleven type They go out alone, and that despite Gavi's injury, who was one of them.

They beat Georgia (1-7) and Cyprus (6-0) in September. He gave another course of severity in October against Scotland (2-0) and Norway (0-1) and finished the job smoothly in November by dispatching Cyprus (1-3) and Georgia (3-1). Without brilliance, but showing a solid structure, some automatisms assumed by the troops and with the brilliance above all of the best midfielder in the world. In this solvent way, Luis de la Fuente arrived at the Eurocup, who leaves 2023 with the feeling that everything could have changed that June 15 in Enschede, the day when suspicions turned into certainties. Until the first ones return. This is football.