Friday morning found Manuel Mesa, who was performing an important, if unsung, role in Spain’s preparations for Sunday’s Euro 2024 final, in a commendably fair and philosophical frame of mind.
“I want Spain to win,” he said as he delivered barrels of Madrid’s best-known beer to the bars and restaurants of the capital’s Plaza Mayor.
“But of course the best team should win. Whatever happens, a lot of beer is going to be drunk. If we win, we’ll be celebrating. If not, it’ll have to be another year.”
Spain are favourites to win, but Mesa, like many of his compatriots, was taking nothing for granted. Yes, La Roja may have Nico Williams and the wunderkind Lamine Yamal, “but you’ve got Jude Bellingham”.
The country’s manager, Luis de la Fuente, was similarly phlegmatic. “I’m calm,” he told ABC on Friday. “Reaching the final is a privilege for all of us. It’s quite an achievement, but obviously we want to win.”
As the country gears up for a potential fourth Euro triumph, the beers are chilled and giant screens are wheeled into place in squares across the country, the tantalising proximity of victory is tempered by the knowledge that it was far from a foregone conclusion four long weeks ago.
“Spain’s hopes are much higher than they were at the beginning of the tournament,” said Miguel Ángel Lara, a journalist for the Marca sports paper.
“To be blunt, when Spain arrived in Germany, a lot of people thought they were going to make fools of themselves, that they were a team with no way forward and that they’d be going home straight away. But look at what they’ve done, and look at how hard people have swung behind the team. It’s been a radical change.”
As Lara points out, memories of Spain’s disastrous 2-0 defeat by Scotland in the qualifiers in March last year have been displaced by the heroics of Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal.
Yamal, whose goal against France on Tuesday helped put Spain into the final and made the 16-year-old the youngest man to score in Euro history, has enabled his team to move out of the illustrious shadow of the mighty Spanish side with which it has long been unfavourably compared.
“Spain’s big problem is that it’s been looking at itself in the mirror of 2008-2012 and trying to be the same team, trying to play like that team and trying to win like that team. But it hasn’t worked because that team was unique,” said Lara. “You had Xavi, Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Torres, Villa, Casillas, that was a unique generation … [But] I think it’s managed to move past those comparisons now and to play a different way.”
Lara is in Germany to cover the final, but he gets a strong sense of things at home when he speaks to his family.
“I think it’s absolute madness in Spain now, absolute madness,” he said. “When I ring home, my nephews, who range from eight to 16, are totally insane. It’s all, ‘Lamine! Lamine! Nico! Cucurella!’”
Such madness, however, is not by any means a purely Spanish phenomenon.
María Ramírez, who covers the UK for the Spanish online newspaper ElDiario.es, has been following England’s progress with a sense of optimism, deja vu and, at times, bafflement.
“There’s always a lot of exaggeration in football, but I was surprised by the racket the ITV presenter made during the semi-final, saying that England was a step away from being ‘immortal’ when I didn’t think they’d played that well,” she said.
For Ramírez, the sense of comfort and pride that England’s progress through the tournament has elicited is reminiscent of the strength Spaniards drew from their footballing triumphs as the country suffered the agonies of the 2008 economic crash and its lingering aftermath.
“The hope we’re seeing in England at the moment reminds me of that time,” she said. “I think people need some happiness when they’ve got so many problems to deal with in their daily lives. Sure, a win at football’s not going to stop the train being cancelled or fix the pothole in your road, but it’s something that cheers you up.”
