The uncertain project of Luis Enrique in the selection

Since

left the national team, on a summer Monday in Paris more than four years ago, falling badly against

Italy

, Spain has lost three of the 45 games it has played.

With

were 20 (14 wins and six draws).

With

, in the 2018 World Cup, four (1 victory and three draws).

With

, in the current coach's parenthesis, six (four wins and two draws).

Therefore, the three defeats in these four long years correspond

welcome

, whose project in the national team today has many more doubts than certainties.The coach has found the perfect alibi and uses it in all his public appearances.

.

Beyond the patina of contempt that the distinction between "professional" and "non-professional" always offers, an argument used by many coaches, usually when they do not obtain good results, the reality marks that the project resumed last September, for now, it does not work.

The results, the only unquestionable measure of the health of a team, can be clearly improved.

Luis Enrique, between his first stage and this one, has led the team

.

And he hasn't won nearly as many times as he has.

Smiled at

occasions, but did not

(four draws and three defeats).

The numbers sharpen, for the worse, from September to here: a single victory (against Ukraine), four draws (Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland) and another defeat (against Ukraine, in Kiev) .The coach's bet is clear , and the last example was seen in Basel.

After

(177 caps) and

(120) of the entire starting eleven, the player with the most matches was

(which with Saturday adds 10).

The chosen path is to go with very young players wherever it is needed.

"At the end of the world," he specified in the St. Jakob press room.

And the Asturian insists and insists that what he sees he likes, that the team does many things well and that this is the way.

He alludes how many times it is necessary to have that "professional" vision that he has and that, it is assumed, only professionals know how to appreciate.

MORE DOUBTS THAN CERTAINTIES

In any case, the certainties are less than the doubts at this point.

It is true that the team has more the ball than its rivals, that in most matches it has generated more than its rivals, and that it presses in the opposite field whenever it can.

But in all clashes there is a moment when the national team becomes vulnerable, on the one hand, and there are moments when it does not specify its superiority, on the other.

Going down to detail, not even a position as sensitive as goalkeeper is clear.

"We did not see it coming from the inside. Well yes, one said yesterday that he was going to put it on, and the rest of us laughed," said a member of the expedition on Sunday about the appearance on the eleventh of

Unai Simon

.

"I have total confidence in my three goalkeepers, and the facts show it," explained Luis Enrique. The goal is not the only volatile position.

Ramos and Busquets removed, the rest are.

The coach wants to give the youngsters, many of them U21 European champions, but perhaps the intermediate generation between the one who was champion and them, the players who are now 26-27-28 years old, would have something to say.

They proved it

Koke

Y

Morata

on Saturday improving the team a lot.

Olmo, Ferran, Merino, Fabián

, etc ... They are all projects of good players, but their reality today is still far from the European elite.

The good thing for the coach is that neither

Luis Rubiales

, the president, nor

Jose Francisco Molina

, the sports director, have the slightest doubt that the ideal team driver is Luis Enrique.

In fact, more because of his personality, kind and close to all the workers of the Federation, than because of the results, in the expedition that met last Monday in Las Rozas and that will coexist until Tuesday night, questioning the coach derives in a look of 'are you crazy?'

While the project matures, that is not a bad mattress.

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