The keys to the new Álvaro Morata, an unexpected leader

This is not easy to write. It is not easy to describe one of those jokes that circulate on social networks and that is widely used by rhyme lovers.. Let's see how to explain it…

Someone asks: Do you know what they proposed to me?

And the other responds: It is said proposed!

And then comes a thick rhyme that provokes hilarity in the person who makes it and stupefaction in the receiver.

Well, this joke was Álvaro Morata's favorite on the night of June 18 in the corridors of the Feyenoord stadium in Rotterdam, where Spain had just become champion of the League of Nations, beating Croatia on penalties with a panenka from Carvajal. Always a joker, also a good joker, he tried it several times with several interlocutors. That day, the current captain of the national team (Madrid, 30 years old) was one of the happiest in the group, or at least one of those who expressed it the most.. Despite having won two European Championships (one sub'19 and another sub'21), that title with the senior team, he said, was one of the happiest moments of his career, adorned, among other things, by two Champions Leagues (2014 and 2017). with Madrid.

In that Nations League in June he did not wear the armband because Luis de la Fuente recruited Jordi Alba, but the resignation of the former Barça full-back left him as the player with the most caps (today 67). And he made his debut in style, in September, having to read a statement rejecting the behavior of Luis Rubiales that the entire squad signed, but which he had to read. In that episode he was also helped by his coach, Adriá Carmona, a former Barça youth player with whom Álvaro has been working for more than a year.. It will be that -the 'coach'-, it will be the maturity of thirty, it will be a good streak…. Whatever it may be, but the Federation is amazed at Morata's growth as a captain on and off the field.

“I don't know if people are aware of what Álvaro is as a person.”. “He has taken me from the first day and he is like my father,” said Bryan Zaragoza on Thursday night, the last to arrive in Las Rozas.. “Yes, yes, he has assumed his role in an amazing way,” confesses someone who has known him since he started coming to the national team (2014, after the failure in the World Cup in Brazil).. In these nine years, always within the irregularity that has marked his career, he has amassed 34 goals in 67 matches, and is one behind Silva, four behind Torres and 10 behind Raúl, all of them achievable.. It will be more difficult to get to Villa (59 hits).

ONE GOAL EVERY 70 MINUTES

At this start of the season he boasts a goal every 70 minutes, 11 in 11 games (including the national team), not always complete. Numbers unattainable by anyone in Europe except for Bellingham, Madrid's sensation (11, but in 12 events, including the national team as well). Haaland, for example, who will be measured tomorrow in Oslo, also has 11, but in 14 games.

“Now I have confidence,” he often repeats these days, having resolved a summer in which he rejected a dizzying offer from Arabia for two reasons: one familiar, and that is that his wife, Alice Campello, did not welcome going to live in that country, and another, sporting, because after a talk in the summer with Simeone and Andrea Berta, also with Miguel Ángel Gil, the owner of Atlético, he felt that this year was going to be important. And since that for someone like him is the fundamental thing, he agreed to renew his contract and forgot a phrase that slipped into his intimate relationships months ago and that alluded to the monotony of training in his team.

Morata, someone who has moved 179 million in transfers during his career (only surpassed by Neymar, Cristiano and Lukaku) has been very attentive these weeks to the Federation workers, shaken by the Rubiales case. He has been concerned first-hand for those closest to the footballers in the concentrations, and has even made arrangements with the president, Pedro Rocha, to try to help these workers, in a captaincy task, away from the pitch, which continues amazing in Las Rozas. Fixed for Luis de la Fuente, tomorrow against Norway he will once again be a starter and captain in search of closing Spain's qualification for the Euro Cup, where he will arrive at 31 years old and at the happiest moment of his career. And of his life.