European champions Spain fancied to win World Cup title

MADRID: Spain have spent the last two years ‌making international football look like a problem someone else has to solve and as the World Cup looms the question for the other 47 teams is blunt enough — who can stop Luis de la Fuente’s red machine?

The European champions arrive at the tournament with a record fourth continental title behind them, a dazzling collective identity and the air of a side who have discovered the rarest of tournament ingredients — style with steel.

Their Euro 2024 triumph in Germany was not built on one irresistible individual but on a swarm of them.

Spain won every match, played fast, direct, fearless football and repeatedly found answers from the bench when matches began asking awkward questions.

The final against England told the story neatly.

Substitute Mikel Oyarzabal became the 10th Spain player to score ‌at Euro 2024 ‌when he helped to craft and then finished the 86th-minute goal ‌that sealed a 2-1 win. It was Spain’s 15th goal of the tournament, the most by any team at a Euros.

At the center of it all is De la Fuente, once mocked online as “Luis de la Who?” after his appointment in 2023 following more than a decade working in Spain’s youth system.

Nearly four years later, the joke has aged about as well as a banana left in a gym bag.

De la Fuente’s strength is that this group has not been hastily assembled. He has worked before with many of the players traveling to North America, including ‌Rodri, Mikel Merino and Fabian Ruiz, who were part ‌of his success with the Under-19 and Under-21 sides.

Nobody, though, has flourished more spectacularly than Lamine Yamal. ‌The Barcelona winger exploded into global view as a 16-year-old and was an integral part ‌of the Euro 2024 triumph.

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