Who knows what will happen tonight in the final in Berlin, although I only hope for something good, but whatever happens, we can say that this team has made us proud. Great play, long-range shooting, six consecutive victories, the ability to stand up to tough times and tough times. Some people are already comparing it to tiki-taka, although I’m not quite there yet. But it has created an excited and happy atmosphere. And it has been quite a surprise.
“Surprise for you,” said Luis de la Fuente recently, speaking to a group of journalists. “We knew what was going on.” He seemed a bit cocky, but I agree with him.
A surprise for us journalists, all or almost all of us, certainly for me. The common comment after the list was “there is no more wax than that which burns”, and the diagnosis, “this is a team that can beat anyone, but also lose to anyone”. There was a certain grace, but no reliability. And of course, it was not thought that these players were as good as they are showing. Why?
My idea is that we live in a state of greed with Madrid and Barça, who attract more public and published attention than ever before. This is something that has grown with the century and increased exponentially in the years of Messi-Guardiola and Cristiano-Mourinho, making the Clásico our most exportable product, even above the Sanfermines. All the players of those two clubs are known and scrutinised, and not only by the four sports newspapers, two from each city, which dedicate their best spaces to those two clubs. It also happens with radio or television programmes, the networks. I remember a long time ago a summer day when I woke up expecting to find on the news what a Spanish team had done that the day before was playing one of those Champions League qualifying matches; I found complete and well-filmed information on the pre-season activities of Madrid and Barça, each in their own retreat, in Nyon and Papendal, and there were not even three seconds to communicate the result of that match I was looking for.
Everything that travels outside the radar of Madrid or Barça deserves little attention from us, so as this team has little of both, or less than usual, it was necessary for this to happen so that we found out that there are also excellent footballers in other teams. Controlled, what can be said controlled, we only had Rodri, and perhaps because it is also a bit Madrid-Barça: he is trained by Guardiola and in the last three years his City has played decisive matches against Madrid. But we did not calibrate others from outside, such as Cucurella, Fabián or Olmo, in the right measure. Cucurella at Chelsea? Well, it is not a bad place, but Barça raised him and if he did not stay there it will be for a reason. Fabián at PSG? That is nothing more than the court of a capricious sheikh who has always signed at random, who finally gets away from Mbappé to come to real football. Olmo at Leipzig? Another who didn’t measure up at Barça and had to make a living in Croatia, then in the thick of the Bundesliga. What can we say about Laporte, if he chose Saudi Arabia.
And the rest? Yes, good players from respectable Spanish teams, but at the end of the day they are extras in a film starring Madrid and Barça. A backdrop, a necessary landscape for the great drama to unfold. Rodri excluded, we were left with Carvajal, Nacho, Lamine and the fluctuating Pedri, the only representatives of our greats, and among them only Carvajal and Lamine as true luminaries. If they stand out at Madrid and Barça, how could they not stand out in the National Team?
But all those who have come out, even those two centre-backs that we picked up as discards from France, are playing with extreme solvency, if not with an excellent artistic level or both at the same time, as is the case of Nico Williams, one of the great revelations of the competition.
This has happened because a coach who has dealt with most of them when they were kids in the lower teams, and who might also have seemed like a small thing at first, has known how to get the best out of them and harmonize them; but also and above all because they had it inside them, even if we hadn’t been able to notice it. Because there is football and footballers beyond Madrid and Barcelona.
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