Shortly before finding the announcement in a newspaper that brought him to the federation in 2013, Luis de la Fuente was killing his worrying moments standing in Lezama, watching Marcelo Bielsa, his rival on the bench, work in the early hours of this Friday to Saturday (2:00, La1 and Dazn). “I am a great admirer of his,” the Spanish coach said this Thursday. “I spent five or six months watching Marcelo’s training sessions when he was a coach at Athletic. I have all the training sessions recorded. I learned a lot from him. He made Athletic play wonderfully good football, with “.
Despite that summit, Bielsa believes that the guy who watched him carefully has surpassed him: “It doesn’t represent my style, because it is a much more beautiful football than what I have managed to achieve with my team,” he said a couple of hours later in the same press room. “The football he has achieved with Spain is exquisite.” Watching him, he believes he has detected one of the keys that can save them: “Spain is worse the less time they have the ball,” he said.
That unforgettable learning for De la Fuente happened in 2012, when he was not even close to the world elite in which he has established himself with Spain. Alavés had fired him a few months before in Second B and he was beginning to lose hope. “Next month someone will call me,” he remembers thinking in his autobiography. “And the following month arrived and they didn’t call me.” And here are now master and disciple applied in the Guadalajara stadium to settle the path of their teams in the remainder of the World Cup.
After the , Spain enters the last round of the group stage between the calm of its almost inescapable classification for the crossroads and the threat that Uruguay’s efforts to cling to its last option to avoid returning home may pose. La Roja will finish first if they win and also if they draw, unless the first-time team Cape Verde defeats Saudi Arabia by four goals or more. In that case, the team with the most goals in the tournament would have preference.
Only a defeat for Spain combined with a victory for Cape Verde would leave La Roja third in the group with four points, at the expense of the outcome of the other groups to see if they finish as one of the best eight third parties, which are those who advance to the round of 32. As things stand, if Spain maintains first place, it would meet Austria on July 2 in Los Angeles (9:00 p.m.). If Cape Verde beats him, he would face Argentina on July 3 in Miami (0.00).
But in the selection they try not to be distracted by either the favorable accounts, the predictable energy of Uruguay, or the small open uncertainties. Nico Williams was forceful: “If we start doing calculations and thinking beyond, you can hit the wall, as we say in Bilbao,” he said this Thursday at the Sports Arena in Guadalajara, the work headquarters of the Chivas women’s section. Spain trained there in the run-up to the duel against Uruguay, and before training held a minute of silence for the victims of the earthquakes in Venezuela.
The Athletic footballer, fresh from injury, has had minutes in both matches, but he is still far from an optimal version. “Physically I feel very good, but it is true that I have to pick up the competition rhythm, that spark that characterizes me. But I think it will only come with the additional training that I am doing. I hope that Nico will be better,” he said. On the Uruguayan side, the one who finally returns is Atlético de Madrid center back José María Giménez, who suffered a serious sprained ankle in May and has not been able to play since then.
The favorable outlook does not diminish the group’s ambition. “For us, being first in the group is important,” said Yeremy Pino. “It gives us confidence for what is coming, which is very big.”
The group shares the spirit of De la Fuente, summarized by the coach this Thursday in a brief sentence: “I only know how to live each day to win.” Also to whom it served as a guide and even a relief from the most disturbing months of his professional life, and who sees himself on the edge of the precipice: “Like a final where no detail can be ignored, and the willingness to compete for every meter and every ball is going to be maximum.”
