Euro 2024: Depth, diversity and unity fuel Spain's historic triumph

If a major part of the definition of a good tournament is that the best team ends up lifting the trophy, then Euro 2024 moved a long way to passing the ‘good tournament’ test. By beating England 2-1, via late goals from both teams but no need for extra time, Spain stamped the same authority on the last match of the 51 that has kept large parts of the world captivated – or at least curious – as they had on their previous six.

Spain won all seven of their matches in Germany, a rarity in a competition that includes three group games and another three knockouts on the way to the final. They beat the previous holders Italy, pre-event favourites France, hosts Germany and an England who had seemed blessed by good luck even if their football was often drab. Gareth Southgate’s gifted but underperforming players at least honoured a habit of suspense in the Olimpiastadion with the kind of belated equaliser that characterised their lurch to Berlin, Cole Palmer coming off the bench and, within three minutes, answering Nico Williams’ smooth finish after fine work from the wonderfully precocious Lamine Yamal, shortly after half time.

But this time, England ran into opponents uninhibited by a late setback. A Spain substitute, Mikel Oyarzabal, delivered the winning goal with three minutes of the 90 remaining, which left enough time for the reliably influential Dani Olmo to clear a goal-bound England header off the line. With that, England’s hopes of ending a 58-year drought of major trophies died.

Olmo’s story typifies some of the best aspects of this Spain squad, not least their strength in depth. He started the tournament outside head coach Luis de la Fuente’s preferred starting side. He ended up among the tournament’s joint leading scorers. This having come off the bench more often than he had lined up at kick-off. He owed his promotion to the first XI to the injury picked up by Pedri in the quarter-final against Germany.

Nor would Fabian Ruiz, excellent in Spain’s midfield throughout, likely have established his key role had Barcelona’s Gavi, recuperating from cruciate ligament surgery, been available. The stand-ins all starred, no more so than when, halfway through Sunday’s final, the absolute governor of Spain’s midfield, Manchester City’s Rodri, had to be withdrawn with a muscle problem.

A Spain without Rodri looked like another blessing for England. It was not. Rodri’s half-time replacement, Martin Zubimendi, who has two competitive international starts on his resume, immediately set about knitting together a period of uninterrupted Spanish possession, of patient pass-and-move, that would lead to Williams’ opening goal. No Rodri? No problem. No Pedri or Gavi? Spain can manage.

Pedri and Gavi both play for Barcelona. Rodri is a Champions League and serial Premier League winner and could be glimpsed, as Zubimendi was being briefed, with his tracksuit top on, at the touchline, issuing his own advice to teammates on how to chase down Spain’s fourth European Championship title, their third of the tournament’s last five editions.

This being Rodri, there was no ostentation to his barking out of orders, his briefly supplementing the coaching staff. He is one of the least showy of football’s modern stars, discreet in his public appearances, reluctant to advertise himself for commercial spin-offs.

And there’s a modesty to the back-ups who manned the midfield in his absence. Olmo, 26, is from Catalonia, so grew up in Barcelona’s catchment area. But he made his professional debut for Dinamo Zagreb, and now plays for RB Leipzig. The only time in his senior career he’s been able to call himself a club champion is in the relatively unheralded Croatian league. Fabian, 28, only started winning league titles when he joined Paris Saint-Germain two years back, after stints at Real Betis and Napoli.

Zubimendi, 25, is at Real Sociedad, the club he grew up with. Club colleagues include Oyarzabal, Robin le Normand, the Spain centre-back, and Mikel Merino, match-winner for Spain against Germany. Quite a four weeks it has been for la Real, as Real Sociedad are known.

Quite a tournament, too, for the Basque region of Spain, home to la Real and to Athletic Bilbao, suppliers to the national team of the electric Williams and Unai Simon, whose aggressive, front-foot goalkeeping is a basis for probably the most efficient pressing game of any side at Euro 2024 – the event that concludes a European season in which Basque football already had plenty to boast about. Its native coaches, for a start, like Xabi Alonso, who led Bayer Leverkusen to a German domestic double, Mikel Arteta and Unai Emery who raised standards so high at Arsenal and Aston Villa respectively.

That Basque school of influence reached beyond the European season. Aymeric Laporte, a touchstone for Spain both as defender and passer from the back, came through the youth system at Athletic Bilbao before joining City and, last summer, Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia. He had spent nine months hearing his place in the Spain team, his readiness for major international competition, questioned because he had moved to the ambitious Saudi Pro League.

On Sunday night, with his gold medal achieved, he settled some scores. “There was a lot of bad information and a lot of opinionating,” Laporte said. “I was very prepared for this tournament. The rest is history.”

Spain have made plenty of history. No one more thrillingly than Yamal, who only turned 17 the day before the final, scored a breathtaking goal in the semi, and assisted Williams’ strike against England. A year ago, he had never started a senior game for Barcelona, and was still being pursued for a future international career by Morocco, where his father comes from.

He and Williams, whose Ghana-born parents arrived in Spain seeking asylum in the 1990s – having travelled by land from west Africa and climbed over the border fence than separates Melilla from Morocco – find themselves celebrated as figureheads for a generation of Spaniards of Middle East and African heritage.

Williams finds himself coveted, too, all the more for his brilliant wing play at the Euros. Barcelona are the superclub who have least disguised their interest in triggering a buyout clause estimated at under €60 million in his Athletic contract.

As for Yamal, he will never have a year again like 2024. Yet he could still be playing elite football in 2044. By then he’ll be the same age as Lionel Messi – who on Sunday picked up another Copa America title with Argentina – is now.

From here on, the scrutiny on Yamal will suddenly be fiercer, the man-marking tighter, the distractions plenty. He’s about to start a new La Liga season with Barca where he’ll suddenly be the major star. It’s a season for which rivals Real Madrid will be arming themselves with a new megastar, the grown-up former prodigy Kylian Mbappe. Up next: 'Lamine versus Kylian', clasico after clasico. That should keep Spanish football centre stage.

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