Luis de la Fuente is losing sleep and it’s only getting worse, yet it isn’t panic, it is preparation. Spain have known for five days where and when they are going to play their last-16 tie – Cologne on Sunday night – but not who they are going to play against, only that it will be someone who finished third in Group A, D, E or F. By the time they find out, a week will have passed since they secured their passage. When they reached the dressing room in Düsseldorf after their final group game, 11 teams could still be their next opponents; the reward for excellence is uncertainty.
“If we’ve only slept two, three hours a night so far, we’re going to have to go a few with almost no sleep at all because we’ll have to study more opponents and be ready for anything until we know for sure,” Spain’s coach said. “It will be Wednesday night before we do but there’s no other choice. In any case, we’ll be prepared, mentally ready to try to go through.”
The midfielder Mikel Merino, meanwhile, insisted: “It doesn’t matter who we get; they’re all going to be very hard.” He was probably half right: it may not matter, but not so much because potential opponents are the same level – they are not – as because surely Spain are just better than all 11 of them.
Or should that say all 23?
Merino had come off having just started against Albania in the final group game; he was one of 10 Spain players making their first start. The only one who had begun a match until then, Aymeric Laporte, needed the minutes and impressed. Qualification secured, De la Fuente was able to rest his starters and integrate the rest, ensuring that every member of the squad except the third-choice goalkeeper, Álex Remiro, reached the last 16 with minutes, ready to go.
Together, they did what the starters had: they won. It could hardly have gone more perfectly. Drawn in supposedly the hardest group, Spain reached the second round with nine points from nine and no goals conceded – the first time they have advanced from a group without conceding. “That is something we have to appreciate,” De la Fuente said. Nor is it just the numbers: they had played better than anyone in the first phase too, going from candidates to favourites.
There will be greater tests, not least Germany in the quarter-final if they both get there. No, they didn’t want that, but as it turns out Germany won’t be pleased either. Until Niclas Füllkrug’s late goal against Switzerland, the inevitable joke was that the Germans were doing it on purpose, anything to avoid the selección. As plans go, it would seem a reasonably sensible one. No wonder everyone was getting excited; back home, no one expected this.
“What we have done so far deserves a huge amount of credit,” De la Fuente said. Why put the brakes on the enthusiasm, the hope? “Hope,” he said, “is free, and we’re the first to feel that hope, that optimism. But we do so with our feet on the ground: it doesn’t guarantee anything. And from the last 16, it will be a different competition for sure.”
That Spain performed well again in the third match despite the changes did not entirely surprise the Albania coach, Sylvinho: “Their B team could play the final and be favourites,” he had warned. And if that might have been pushing it, while this was Albania not France, there was a demonstration of depth here. David Raya impressed. Dani Olmo, in particular, was superb. He may be the one player who puts that starting XI in Cologne in doubt, De la Fuente left to choose between him and Pedri. Yet this fixture did not so much demonstrate that Spain have a lot of good players as that they have a variety of them, different resources and profiles for different needs, different moments.
Jesús Navas and Álex Grimaldo are not the same as Dani Carvajal and Marc Cucurella; Merino’s profile is not Fabián Ruiz’s; Joselu is not Álvaro Morata; Mikel Oyarzabal and Ferran Torres, who scored, are not the same as Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal. Spain have had a settled side so far but there has been a twist to the old style – 12 teams have had more possession – and before the tournament, Morata had insisted: “I know it sounds strange but at a Euros, I think it’s not the starters; it’s the players who come on that decide it, maybe in extra time or even a shootout.”
Which is not to say there are doubts about the starters, who have been superb. And against Albania, Lamine Yamal came on and produced an outrageous piece of skill that prompted Lothar Matthäus to exclaim: “Maradona, Messi and now Yamal.”
Hype, perhaps. And there was something funny about De la Fuente talking caution, insisting that it was his duty to protect Lamine Yamal – who is 16, remember – and then in the next breath saying he is “touched by God’s wand”. But why not? It is true that Spain have been special. “They’re frightening, genuinely frightening: it’s incredible,” the Albania full-back Ivan Balliu said. “I have to congratulate them because they’re having a great tournament and I think they’re favourites to win it.”
“Spain are very, very strong,” Sylvinho said afterwards. “They have lots of good players inside, which was always their DNA. But they also have players outside who in four, five, six seconds kill you. They do transitions so fast and I hadn’t seen that in Spain before. Tactically they’re very good. They have great players in midfield, quick ones. And people don’t talk about it but they defend very well, too. They have a line of four, close spaces so well. You study them, look at them, and you think: ‘Bloody hell, how are we going to get in there?’ I have studied them a lot, and: Pffff! They’re a great team, candidates for sure.”
De la Fuente added: “That other teams and professionals speak highly of us, of the way we’re playing and the football we’re producing, is the best backing we could have, a testimony. We have a group of players who are incredibly talented and incredibly ambitious and, if we keep working with humility, we have the chance to experience something very important, something historic. This doesn’t mean we will win but I think we’re the best and I feel obliged to tell my players that. That people talk like this about us shows that our view is shared outside of here, that we’re not wrong. We know how we are in Spain: you go from being right up there one day and nothing the next. But we’re playing well, building excitement and hope.”
“Why can’t we dream of something big?” Torres asked.
• This article was amended on 26 June 2024. Spain’s first knockout tie is on Sunday, not Saturday; and Germany’s stoppage-time equaliser in the group stage came against Switzerland, not Austria.
