The sirens wailed, the crowd surged and shrieked and clasped its homemade banners, held back by a line of police with guns and earpieces. Finally the presidential-style motorcade slid to a halt, the door whispered open (more swoons and gasps) and to a background of Beatlemania-style excitement a slightly scruffy 64-year-old man shuffled down the steps and in through the doors of Alicante’s Hotel Meliá.
Vicente del Bosque has yet to confirm he will step down as the manager of the European champions next summer. Speaking before Spain’s friendly against England in Alicante on Friday night, an occasion of relatively urgent interest for both teams, Del Bosque would only say again he will at some point make a decision. Two Champions Leagues, a World Cup and a European Championship down the line one thing is certain. He really doesn’t look like he’ll miss the press conferences much.
As the crowd, an odd mix of young women and middle-aged men, continued to yell the players’ names, with Iker Casillas and Gerard Piqué the most urgently beseeched, it was tempting to guess at the last time an England team were greeted with this kind of fervour. Of course, it helps when you win trophies. For Spain the Diana Ross-scale entrance is both a routine welcome these days and a reminder of something England may rediscover for themselves when they face Del Bosque’s team at the Estadio José Rico Pérez.
Never mind the implosion at the World Cup or the likely departure next year of the dolefully reassuring El Professor. Never mind Spain are ranked sixth in the world and have lost all three post-World Cup meetings with A-list opposition. They are still the champs, a team of club football aristocrats on a five-game winning run without conceding a goal, and with an eye on becoming the first team to win the Henri Delaunay Trophy three times in a row, a feat that would transform an extraordinary mini-era into the stuff of legend.
For all that, the question of how successfully Spain have regeared and retrenched after the derailing of that slick-passing machine in Salvador and Rio in 2014 remains. “Our rivals are strong and we have a new team but I think this team still has a sufficiently high level to win this trophy,” Juan Mata said.
New teams: new generations. It was a theme Koke also picked up. “There were many people who played great football, won everything. But there is a new generation now with great desire to win things. We’re only at the start.”
The notion of Spain as new-build underdogs is a little disingenuous given they are likely to line up in Alicante with seven current or former Barcelona players and six with a Euro 2012 winner’s medal. It is perhaps more a tribute simply to the shadow of the genuinely great team who reached their zenith in Kiev three and a half years ago. Since when Spain have lost a style-defining genius in Xavi, while players such as Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fàbregas, Sergio Ramos and David Silva (the last two currently injured) remain with a few more miles on the clock.
The one player Spain have struggled to groom is a prolific goalscorer in the mould of David Villa. Once again Del Bosque was asked about his problems in the striker’s position. This being Spain this is a problem that involves still being able to field last season’s second top Premier League goalscorer, Diego Costa, and Álvaro Morata, who scored in the Champions League final and semi-final for Juventus. Neither has been in the sharpest form. Neither has more than a single goal for Spain. “We could play one or two up front, we’ll see,” Del Bosque suggested, mischievously given this is a man who fielded something close to a 4-6-0 formation en route to wining that last Euros.
On Costa Del Bosque did suggest the Premier League’s most divisive pantomime dame of a central battering ram could do with “smoothing out his character and his behaviour”, although this was more philosophical musing than rebuke. “We don’t feel we pick him because we owe him anything. He was picked because we believe in him, it is a question of confidence.”
On Costa’s lack of goals for Chelsea – he has six in his past 29 games – Del Bosque was equally phlegmatic: “With Chelsea not playing well this season all of their elements are being affected by it.”
Spain themselves have been on a good run. Albeit, as with England, one that has involved batting aside assorted middle and lightweights in Euro qualification. For this “prestige friendly” Del Bosque is likely to stick with the 4-3-3 formation he has used recently.
If there is a weakness it is perhaps at centre-back, where Marc Bartra has played 90 minutes twice since Spain’s last game a month ago. Nolito, Celta Vigo’s hard-running late-bloomer at 29 should make his second successive start on the left wing. Thiago Alcântara, Sergio Busquets and Iniesta are a genuinely drool-worthy midfield, capable of the kind of high-technique possession monopoly that could ensure a draining evening for England.
