Saúl Ñíguez, like several of his Spain team‑mates who will contest the European Under-21 Championship final on Friday night, has a point to prove. For the second and final time the Atlético Madrid midfielder, whose brilliant hat-trick destroyed Italy in the semi-final on Tuesday, will attempt to win this competition, at the end of an international youth career that started in 2009 for the under-16 side.
Saúl, 22, will win his 48th cap at youth level in Krakow against Germany having secured only one title – the European Under-19 Championship in 2012 – after La Rojita surprisingly failed to qualify for the Under-21 finals last time, when Saúl was suffering from a debilitating kidney injury. He also missed out on selection for the star-studded team who won a second successive tournament at the 2013 edition, from which Álvaro Morata, Thiago Alcântara, Isco and Koke are firmly established in the senior set-up.
The player from Elche in Spain’s south-eastern corner has been the outstanding individual of the tournament in Poland, with five goals from the three matches in which he has featured as the fulcrum of Albert Celades’s dashing team. His second – a 25-yard piledriver past Gianluigi Donnarumma in the 3-1 win against Italy – has been beaten only by Bruma’s volley for Portugal against Spain in the best goal stakes.
“This is a last hurrah for the 1994-95 generation,” Saúl said before Spain’s opening 5-0 victory against Macedonia, in which he scored the first goal after 10 minutes. “We have to approach it like Atlético Madrid would: one game at a time, in the knowledge it could be our last time. We’re going to enjoy it but we’ve also got to recognise that this tournament could change many players’ lives.”
Coincidentally 1995 was the year that the Spanish Football Association introduced its masterplan to end a run of failure on the international stage. Closer cooperation with the clubs and a focus on developing homegrown players – described as a “fidelity strategy” by the then FA president José Luis Astiazarán in 2010 – has certainly served them well in the intervening years, culminating in the unprecedented success on the senior stage between 2008 and 2012.
However, following the group-stage exit at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the failure to qualify for the last Under-21 tournament a year later in the Czech Republic after losing against Serbia in the play-offs was something of an embarrassment to a country that has won seven of the 15 European Under-19 Championship titles since it was introduced in 2002. The departure of Julen Lopetegui, now the senior Spain coach, to Porto after his contract with the Under-21s was not renewed in 2014 was blamed for the disappointing campaign, with 2015 ranking as Spain’s worst for a decade at youth level.
Celades, a former midfielder for Real Madrid and Barcelona, at first struggled to make the most of another supremely talented generation. Yet a series of superb performances that has yielded 12 goals and four comfortable victories means only Stefan Kuntz’s Germany side – England’s conquerors on penalties in the other semi‑final – stand in the way of a fifth victory in this tournament that has also showcased the ability of the outstanding Dani Ceballos and Marco Asensio.
“It’s the last step so we need to win,” said the captain Gerard Deulofeu, of Everton, who will play for a record 36th time for his country at this level. “I didn’t have a chance to be at the last Euro but we’re here now in the final and have come to win, the last game and last big effort.
“This will be the most important match of my under-21 career so we need to make it count. But it’s not about individuals – we have a very good team spirit.”
The former Barcelona winger is set to return to the Camp Nou after spending last season on loan at Milan and has been criticised by some of the Spanish media for his performances in Poland despite excellent results. With Arsenal’s Héctor Bellerín, Marcos Llorente and Sandro Ramírez – the Málaga striker who looks set to join Everton after the tournament – also among his team‑mates, Deulofeu has a lot to live up to.
“Some media have made us favourites,” Celades said. “There’s been a big euphoria surrounding the team in Spain but inside the group we’re very conscious of what it’s taken to get here. I don’t want to be boring but it’s cost us a lot to get here, the players know that. When you get to a final, the psychological aspect is more important than the physical.”
Spain (4-3-3): Kepa; Bellerín, Mere, Vallejo, Jonny; Ceballos, Llorente, Saúl; Deulofeu, Sandro, Asensio.
Germany (4-2-3-1): Pollersbeck; Toljan, Stark, Kempf, Gerhardt; Haberer, Arnold; Philipp, Meyer, Gnabry; Platte.
