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All hail Marcos Senna, Spain’s deferential dictator and 2008 hero

When Marcos Senna entered the field during Spain’s World Cup last 16 clash with France in 2006, his adopted nation were level and pushing to go in front.

But, in the 20 minutes that followed, the eventual finalists kicked things up a gear, dumping Spain out of the competition with goals from Patrick Vieira and Zinedine Zidane.

In Senna’s mind, this painstaking premature exit was the “worst memory” of his career, but it was perhaps the wake-up call needed to kickstart La Furia Roja’s period of dominance.

It’s natural to overlook Senna when remembering the Spain side which won three major competitions on the bounce. During Euro 2008, Senna’s sole international triumph, he was tasked with sitting behind an array of attack-minded midfielders. Senna was the Stig Anderson to Spain’s ABBA.

To call him the heartbeat of the team would be an injustice – he was a larger organ, perhaps the skin, the foil which allowed other parts to function at their peak. He also provided the blueprint for his successor, essentially giving Sergio Busquets seven 90-minute tutorials on how to perform as the enabler of longstanding talents such as Xavi, Iniesta, Silva and Fabregas.

As Senna has said: “I had to do the dirty work, but football has evolved so much that even the holding midfielders need to know how to carry the ball as well. If I wasn’t capable of doing that I probably wouldn’t have played.”

To label any player ‘underrated’ or ‘overrated’ is not only a paradox, it’s an incredibly boring and overused way to have a discussion. And in Senna’s case, it doesn’t quite feel right to call him ‘unheralded’ or ‘under the radar’ either; he made it into the Euro 2008 team of the tournament.

Perhaps the lack of discussion around Senna’s career stems

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