Francesco Totti at Roma. Lionel Messi at Barcelona. Sergio Ramos with Spain. To get a measure of what sort of a coach Luis Enrique can be, that’s a useful list: He has benched or dropped all these icons during his career as a club and national manager.
In Italy, whose national team Luis Enrique’s Spain confront at Wembley on Tuesday with a place in the Euro 2020 final at stake, he is still remembered as the boss who left out Totti, Roma legend and captain. Luis Enrique did so very soon after arriving as a young manager at Roma in 2011. That Italian episode of his career would be relatively short. Totti’s captaincy, naturally, survived Luis Enrique’s time there.
Messi, likewise, came through a famous January evening in 2015 when, in Luis Enrique’s first season in charge at Barcelona, he was left out of the starting XI in a defeat at Real Sociedad. And Barcelona ended that season with a Treble.
Roma, as it happens, lost the Europa League tie — to Slovan Bratislava — in which Luis Enrique kept Totti on the bench but, like Messi, captain Totti would later praise Luis Enrique as a manager who understands players, has a clarity of purpose and some excellent ideas about how football should be played.
A decade on from his first job as a senior coach, Luis Enrique has brought some of that clarity to Spain. He took over the national team after the disappointing World Cup in Russia and set about formulating his ideas for a refreshed, rejuvenated La Roja. He chose a path that meant taking risks.
Should his team lose on Tuesday, and leak a careless goal or more against a potent, in-form Italy, then it is certain Sergio Ramos’s name will crop up in the critical reviews.
Luis Enrique raised eyebrows when he omitted the long-serving Spain captain from his squad, citing doubts about Sergio Ramos’s fitness. The player, owner of 180 international caps, thought — and had been advised — he was on course to be match-fit for June after an injury-hampered end of season with Real Madrid. His exclusion was never going to pass as a mere footnote.
Even less so when, without Ramos, Spain entered the tournament with an untried pairing of centre-halves, Aymeric Laporte, freshly switched to representing Spain rather than his native France, and Pau Torres.
Nowhere more than in this part of the pitch is the contrast between Spain’s inexperience and Italy’s accumulated know-how more pronounced. Azzurri manager Roberto Mancini should on Tuesday line up Giorgio Chiellini and Leo Bonucci as his captain and vice-captain. The Juventus centre-backs will playing alongside one another for the 325th time.
They will likely be directly up against their Juventus colleague, Alvaro Morata, the centre-forward in whom Luis Enrique has had to reaffirm his faith time and again over the last three weeks. Morata has two goals so far, plus a number of chances not converted, and still ringing in his ears some boos and jeers directed at him during Spain’s group matches in Seville.
“He is used to situations like that, but it’s not pleasant,” said his manager after Morata drew his first blank, in the 0-0 draw against Sweden that opened Spain’s campaign. At which point Luis Enrique made an undertaking. “I will try to protect my players to the maximum.”
In a young squad, that reassurance matters. Morata paid back his coach with the goal that put Spain ahead in extra-time against Croatia in the first knockout round. Unai Simon, the 24-year-old goalkeeper picked ahead of the far more experienced David De Gea and responsible for a dreadful mistake against Croatia, bounced back to make key saves in the penalty shoot-out win over Switzerland in the quarter-finals. Pedri, 18, has thrived in midfield on the trust his coach has placed in him.
But it has been a rollercoaster so far, through the stagnant, frustrating first two matches, both drawn, to the 10 goals Spain scored in their next pair of fixtures, to nail-biting progress via the shoot-out against the Swiss in which more spot-kicks were saved or missed than were scored.
All of which would strike Italy as uncomfortably frantic. The Italians cannot help but look like the calmer semi-finalists. They have not fallen behind in any of their five wins so far. They beat the stubborn Swiss 3-0 in the group phase. Apart from the damaging injury to their outstanding left-back Leonardo Spinazzola, they have barely suffered a serious setback.
So Luis Enrique will recognise why the Azzurri, for their smooth progress, are favourites to reach the semi-final. But, being Luis Enrique, he will not conform to that opinion.
