The first celebrations of Spain’s qualification to the final of the European Championship on the Allianz Arena pitch left a scare and a sad man. At the end of the match against France, the hooligan of the day appeared on the pitch trying to catch selfies with the Spanish players. A security employee of the Spanish federation ran to intercept him, slipped and ended up hitting Álvaro Morata, who was left limping, bewildered as he did not understand where the blow had come from while he was looking the other way. The security employee was crushed by the anguish of having injured the captain of the national team. “If I don’t play in the final because of me…” he said.
But it was just a knock. And a scare. And Morata went on to notice the other’s concern: since then he has not stopped joking with him about the hard tackle. He took care of him as he takes care of everything. Also on the field, of course. He is the striker in the Euros who has given his best in defensive tasks, a fundamental point for the pressing system devised by Luis de la Fuente to work, the team that has never defended higher in a Euro, according to StatsBomb records: Spain has carried out its containment actions at an average of 51.30 metres from its goal.
Morata’s dedication is crucial to sustaining this tension, and Dani Vivian praised him yesterday: “I think his way of defending is the way he lives,” he said. “He ends every game almost in tears, because he has so much responsibility, so much desire for everything to go well… And he reflects it on the pitch.”
No striker at the Euros has been so often exposed to pressing, 28.5 times per game if the figures are adjusted for the amount of possession the team has. He is also the striker who recovers the most balls from such pressing, 4.2 times per game, almost double the number of the second-placed striker, Romania’s Denis Dragus.
There is another fact that underlines Morata’s importance in activating Spain’s defensive system: he is the player in the national team who reacts most often to press in the first five seconds after losing the ball, and the forward who does so the most in the entire tournament, 5.4 times per game. “You can’t be more committed,” said Vivian about the captain’s disruptive effect. “He is the first to defend, and he is the forward. I think that says a lot about him and speaks very well to the team about how we all have to do it.”
Morata’s leadership by example is spreading through the team, as Vivian explained: “We spend a lot of time in the opponent’s half, but the involvement of the whole group in the games is seen in how we turn things around when we lose the ball, how we end up reaching the defensive phase.”
For the striker, it comes at a cost. Last November, before a qualifying match for this tournament against Georgia, Morata gave a statement that was almost like an end-of-career meditation: “There are games in which I might run 12 or 13 kilometres, pressing without stopping. And you have two clear chances, and the ones you miss… Well, that’s football.” That afternoon in Valladolid he showed enormous maturity, particularly with the effects that his physical defensive prowess can have on his scoring effectiveness: “In many parts of my career I have been playing to avoid criticism, to look for the number 6, to go unnoticed, to avoid attracting negative attention. Now I don’t have to try to justify myself or give explanations to people who don’t know me, I try to do my job as best as possible,” he said. “In the end, I have also won many things without scoring a lot of goals, or taking penalties, or being a selfish person.”
In this European competition, he scored Spain’s first goal, 29 minutes into the opening game, against Croatia, at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, where he returns on Sunday for the final. He opened the scoring for the national team in the same way that he is the one who blows the horn for the team to roll up their sleeves and go for the ball. Morata defends for everyone, even though it consumes him. And he also attacks for everyone, even though that keeps him away from the hot spots for finishing.
The forward has scored one goal in the tournament after having chances worth 1.2 expected goals (xG), fewer than Harry Kane, Kai Havertz, Cristiano Ronaldo, Memphis Depay, Romelu Lukaku, Kylian Mbappé and ten other players.
He has not been as close to scoring as the forwards of the other top teams, but his movements have been decisive in bringing others closer. His work in the blind area, with discharges and hand-to-hand combat with the centre-backs, has allowed the team to gain time and disrupt defences. His movements out of the eye of the thirsty spectator highlights have contributed to the explosion of Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal on the wings. In November he said something that seemed prophetic: “If I have to go from here to the end of the season without scoring a goal and we win the Euros and any title with Atleti, I would sign it right now.”
His manoeuvres, which drag the centre-backs along, also clear the centre-half, where Dani Olmo, who has three goals and is the tournament’s top scorer, and Fabián Ruiz, who has two, have appeared. They, like the distressed security guard, like Vivian and the other centre-backs, will celebrate that he will be back on the pitch on Sunday in the final that everyone is still waiting for, just one game away from happiness.
A few days ago, Luis de la Fuente was asked on Cope which footballer he would like to be reincarnated as: “Álvaro Morata”.
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