Crisis, controversy and chaos – yet Spain’s national teams rule football

Sunday’s European Championship final saw Spain beat England 2-1 thanks to goals from Nico Williams and Mikel Oyarzabal to crown a tournament in which they were by far the best team.

Luis de la Fuente’s side had an outstanding month, playing some thrilling football while beating heavyweights Italy, Germany and France to reach the final, with new superstars Williams, Lamine Yamal and Dani Olmo emerging along the way.

It comes 11 months after Spain also beat England, 1-0, to win the Women’s World Cup — having also been the best team in the tournament.

That triumph was, however, immediately marred by then Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales’ post-match behaviour, including kissing one of the players, Jenni Hermoso, on the lips during the on-pitch trophy presentation ceremony. Two months later, football’s worldwide governing body FIFA banned Rubiales from the sport for three years, and he is due to go on trial in Spain for alleged sexual assault and coercion, both of which charges he denies.

Rubiales’ shadow still hangs over all of Spanish football. He had appointed De la Fuente as men’s coach following the 2022 World Cup, and his hand-picked successor as RFEF president Pedro Rocha is being investigated in the same alleged corruption case as Rubiales — which saw the federation’s offices raided by police in March. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Spanish football has plenty of other ongoing issues. Barcelona have serious financial problems their president Joan Laporta is keen to publicly downplay. Real Madrid are La Liga and Champions League holders, yet their president, Florentino Perez, is still trying to push through a Super League project to rival the latter competition.

In March last year, after it was discovered Barcelona made payments totalling €7.3million (£6.1m; $7.9m at current rates) to former referees’ body chief Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018, Barca, various ex-club officials and Negreira were indicted for “corruption”, “breach of trust” and “false business records”. All parties have denied wrongdoing.

Racism has been a grave problem in Spanish football, and wider society, for years, and Vinicius Junior of Real Madrid has continued to receive abuse since his actions during a match at Valencia last year — when he confronted fans in the stands — helped bring a global spotlight to the situation.

Three people were sentenced to eight months in prison after being found guilty of racially abusing Vinicius Jr (Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Sexism has also been a serious issue. Many of the country’s best players were not even at last year’s Women’s World Cup after making themselves unavailable for selection in protest over their treatment by the Spanish football authorities.

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How can Spanish national teams be having such success on the pitch while the game’s governance and administration lurches from crisis to crisis?

The Athletic raised this with a dozen leading figures within the game in Spain, including former national-team players and coaches, La Liga club executives and figures closely connected to members of the victorious men’s and women’s sides.

They preferred to speak anonymously so they could give their honest opinions, knowing that these might not be welcomed by everyone, especially those in power. The Athletic also shared their opinions with the Spanish FA, which declined to comment.

“In Spain, we spend the whole day criticising our political leaders, but the country works well, more or less,” says a Spanish sporting director with experience working in other countries.

“The same in football. The governance within the (Spanish) FA is absolutely lamentable. But the average Spanish person on the street does not really care, and I don’t believe the players do either. They are used to living in a society with very few leaders. So it makes little difference.”

“The key is the talent,” says one person who has worked with current and former Spanish internationals. “The problems in the RFEF do not really complicate things, because the link between the federation and the talent of its players is little or zero. Talent is forged in the small clubs, in the neighbourhoods, and is then exported to the big clubs, or worked on very early at others like Athletic Bilbao or Barcelona, allowing us to see players like Nico, Lamine, Olmo…”

Yamal and Williams were key players as Spain won Euro 2024 (Image Photo Agency/Getty Images)

It isn’t just senior level either. Spain’s age-group national teams have enjoyed unprecedented success at international tournaments since an under-23s team including Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique won gold at the 1992 Olympic Games on home turf in Barcelona.

Future Spain first-team stars Xavi and Iker Casillas won FIFA’s World Youth Championship (later rebranded as the Under-20 World Cup) in 1999. Spain won eight European Under-19 Championships between 2002 and 2019, with players including Fernando Torres, Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos, David Silva, Alvaro Morata, Unai Simon and Olmo being involved in different ‘golden generations’.

Spain’s women won the Under-17 World Cup in 2018 and the Under-20 World Cup four years later, with Salma Paralluelo helping secure both trophies, then adding the senior World Cup in 2023. They also won five European Under-17 titles between 2010 and 2024, with Alexia Putellas, Ona Batlle, Teresa Abelleira, Ivana Andres and Aitana Bonmati among those to have at least one medal from that time.

This has built up a lot of collective and institutional experience within Spanish football, and at the federation. Even disgraced leaders such as Rubiales cannot really mess up a system that works mainly due to the number and quality of qualified coaches and administrators in a country that truly values developing young footballers as a profession.

Spain beat England 1-0 to win the Women’s World Cup last year (Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“Rubiales is nothing new, there have always been problems off the pitch, at the federation, at the clubs, controversies,” says a former Spain international youth coach. “But Spanish football has improved a lot. So much good work is done within the football ecosystem, from the underage ranks up to senior level, from the more modest clubs up to the biggest. You can see that reflected in the level of the players, and the FA has taken advantage of that.”

“Spain has an excellent structure of small clubs, with many excellent coaches, male and female, where boys and girls can learn how to understand the game and grow,” says an ex-Spain international, who is now a sporting director. “And as we (as a people) are not generally so big and strong, we have to be able to manage the play, understand tactics, and work within collective structures.”

The game in Spain has also been open to influences from beyond its borders, with Dutch coaches, most famously Johan Cruyff at Barcelona, bringing new and important ideas in the 1980s and 1990s.

“During the 1980s, we picked up things from all over the world — the Argentine school with Cesar Luis Menotti and Carlos Bilardo, Serbian school with Radomir Antic, Dutch school with Guus Hiddink and Cruyff, British school with John Toshack, Italian school with Fabio Capello and Arrigo Sacchi,” says the sporting director of one club in La Liga, Spanish football’s top division.

Cruyff pictured during his time as Barcelona coach (Gary M Prior/Allsport/Getty Images)

“We had the humility to take the best from each; with the ball, without the ball, physical preparation. Between 2008 and 2012, there was a phase of explosion, now we are in a second stage of confirmation. When you do good work, good players emerge.”

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Another Spanish sporting director, now working outside the country, says: “Spain made a big change from its historic ‘La Furia’ style to relying on quality. For many years now, a style of play, an idea, has been implanted that is very identified with the country, the methodology and how all the clubs work day to day. There is a good level of coaches, culture, staff, methodology and technical quality.

“We still have that ‘furia’ but we have added a really high level of quality. That makes us different, and players keep coming through, now with Lamine Yamal, and more will continue to come through, thanks to the way of working and the culture of the country.”

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Despite producing so many good players and coaches, there are financial problems throughout men’s and women’s football in the country.

La Liga president Javier Tebas is proud of strict financial fair play rules that (mostly) force clubs to live within their means, but most top sides in England and across Europe can easily swoop in to take any male or female player from any Spanish team other than Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Rodri celebrating after Spain beat France in the Euro 2024 semi-finals (Nicolo Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“Barca’s finances, or players or coaches leaving for foreign clubs, is not really a problem,” says an agent of current and former Spain internationals.

“Maybe it’s a blessing. Thanks to Barca’s financial problems, players like Lamine, Gavi and Fermin (Lopez) have had a chance to play (for the first team), otherwise they would still be in the youth team behind players who cost €100million, like before.

“And players moving to Saudi has not been a problem, (Aymeric) Laporte has played well (at Euro 2024). While players who go to the Premier League — say, Rodri (who moved from Atletico Madrid to Manchester City five years ago) — become better and more competitive.”

“The key for the success is all the talent there is in Spain,” says one person close to the national team. “There might be talent flight from La Liga, and teams like Barca and Atletico below their usual level, but the ‘middle class’, like Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao, have many good players who bring a lot. Club teams have to keep reinventing themselves as many players are taken away, which means they keep putting in players from their youth systems.”

“The outflow of talent has also strengthened Spanish football,” says a football development expert. “Leaving the shell is good for many players, assuming they can adapt to living outside Spain. Some left very early, such as Olmo (to Croatia and now Germany) and Fabian Ruiz (to Italy, then France), who finished their development elsewhere. Laporte has also worked with coaches like Marcelo Bielsa at Athletic Bilbao, and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.”

Spanish coaches and executives are now in demand all over the world.

Guardiola heads an ex-Barcelona leadership group at City, while another is being built around Barca icon Lionel Messi at Inter Miami in MLS. Other top clubs around Europe have also hired Spanish expertise — Aston Villa in England qualifying for the European Cup/Champions League for the first time in 41 years, new German champions Bayer Leverkusen ending a run of 11 straight Bayern Munich titles, France’s Marseille — mostly with success. Spanish coaches and administrators were crucial to Qatar’s planning before it hosted World Cup 2022.

“Look at the Spanish coaches in the Premier League, it is not a coincidence,” says a top agent. “The level of coaches in Spain is very, very high. From that very good base, you can build a very competitive national team. Before the tournament (Euro 2024), we did not think this (Spain) team would be as good as we have seen, but De la Fuente and his staff have got top performances from the talent he has.”

Another Spanish sporting director says: “In the world of football, there is so much noise around everything that happens, many circumstances off the pitch that generate a lot of media attention. But the marvellous thing is that the game is about 90 minutes, 11 versus 11, on the pitch.

“Out there, everything that is written or experienced off the pitch can be stopped and changed, as victories transform everything.”

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(Top photo: Getty Images)