Luis de la Fuente’s Spain, viewed with such distrust upon arrival, is one step away from completing an extraordinary turnaround tonight at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin against England (21.00, La1). Or perhaps it has already completed it, because the team that is in a position to add Spain’s fourth Euro Cup, more than anyone else, has drawn a path in the tournament in which it has left three of the four world champions, Italy, Germany and France, on the way, with the fourth awaiting tonight.
It has not been just any old path. De la Fuente has transformed the inane frustration of the more than a thousand passes recorded in the elimination in the last 16 of the last World Cup against Morocco into the most attractive team in the world: from nothing to seduction.
Whether football will remain in line with glory tonight, Spain has picked up the thread of that team that persuaded the world to try to play differently, to try to cultivate talent by different routes from a very early age, to build as it had been built in the youth teams and lower categories of Spain. That model, which had withered from rhetoric, has been revitalised by De la Fuente, also bringing about the symbolic meeting of Jesús Navas, the last representative of the world champion team, aged 38, with Lamine Yamal, the last dazzling appearance, who yesterday blew out the candles of the 17 stuck in a strawberry cake.
The Barcelona player and Nico Williams mark the evolution of the golden idea now infiltrated by its vertigo. They too, children of immigrants born and raised in Spain, underline the transformation and enrichment of society reflected in a team that is increasingly a mirror of what is happening on the streets.
In contrast to a Spain that has rediscovered its thread, there is an England that has been searching for its thread since the World Cup they won in 1966 at Wembley. Not only have they not celebrated again, but they have not played in the final of a major tournament outside England. They entrusted this search to Southgate, in whom certain parallels with De la Fuente can be seen: both come from the lower national teams, where they participated in the training of footballers with whom they now compete at the top. But Southgate’s path is proving to be more tortuous, despite the fact that they reached the final of the last European Championship, also at Wembley.
They lost on penalties to Italy, and that fuelled social rifts, with vicious racist attacks on the players who missed their shots: Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho. They took off after that, with a promising World Cup in Qatar, but at this Euro they have suffered with a game that does not draw on the potential of a squad brimming with talent. They reached the final despite the anger and even anger of their own fans, who threw glasses of beer at their coach after the 0-0 draw against Slovenia. They have survived their own people and their expectations, and also the games: they are the first team to reach the final after falling behind in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, against Switzerland and the Netherlands.
It has also survived the exhaustion of its stars, who even when they were on the brink of defeat have found a way to be decisive, like Jude Bellingham with the overhead kick goal in the round of 16 that allowed England to reach extra time five minutes beyond the 90th minute.
They have the conquest of a spirit that Southgate clings to: “The team has improved in recent weeks. They have shown character, resilience.” In contrast, the strength of the idea cultivated by De la Fuente: “If we are not Spain, we will not have a chance of winning. We have to be recognizable for our strengths.”
Apart from its significance, the final, in which Gavi will accompany the Spanish delegation, has an extra spice. The team’s casual clothes recreate the shirt from the 1996 Euros in which Southgate the player eliminated La Roja. That Southgate the footballer played his last match against Navas: Sevilla beat him in the UEFA final in 2006. At the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, in his last dance with Spain, the Sevillian seeks to crown the seduction with glory.
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
