• The day after the children of Spain Discretion, few photos and the phrase "Luis Enrique is very funny"

  • 17 years and 62 days Gavi smashes the precocity record

  • Opinion Luis Enrique, coach and agitator

The day it was presented, a hot July 19, 2018,

Luis Enrique

already made it very clear what he was going to do with the national team.

If not, just remember a few phrases:

-I want to give my first list;

there will be surprises for sure.

-People come from behind whom we are going to give confidence.

-I made a first to-do list and I have had 70 players.

Well, Luis Enrique has kept his word. There has not been a single summons in which there have been no surprises, he walks towards that first squad of 70 players and, above all, he has given confidence to those people who came "from behind." In fact, on Wednesday at San Siro he made his debut for

Gavi

, in history as the youngest player to wear that shirt, at 17 years and 62 days. "It is not that it is the future, it is that it is already the present of the national team", warned the Asturian coach about the same grass of San Siro, who attended the debutants numbers 26 and 27 (

Yeremy Pino

) of the Luis Enrique era.

The numbers speak: in the 32 games he has been leading Spain, the coach

has called 63 different players, and of them, 27 have been to Las Rozas for the first time

. That is, 42.8% of the calls were new. To place Luis Enrique in the context of history, that percentage in his predecessors was always lower, except in the case of

Vicente del Bosque

, who spent eight years and, therefore, is almost not comparable. With

Robert Moreno

, only 16% of the calls were new. With

Lopetegui

, 27.2%. With Del Bosque, it is written, they were 79%, and with

Luis Aragonés

, which was four years and also made a revolution, they were 55%.

"I do not look at the DNI", the technician usually says, that this Thursday he allowed his boys to eat outside the Hotel Meliá Milano and gave them the afternoon off so they could be distracted a bit.

Those who are close to him say that the extreme bets will continue.

"And the ones that remain," they announce, because if the Asturian is clear about something, it is that he does not want a typical team, he does not want a block.

He wants 40-50 players interchangeable with each other, although it is true that half a dozen seem to have settled.

In the absence of knowing those to come, the follies, almost all blessed, of Luis Enrique are these:

Unai Simon

In September 2020, on his first list after returning to the national team, Luis Enrique called Unai Simón for the first time.

After not smelling the grass in the first five games, suddenly, against the Netherlands in a friendly in November, he put it.

At that time, Unai had barely a year as a starter at Athletic, a team that was not characterized by many clean sheets (10 in 34 games in 2019/2020).

At that time, he was just another First Division goalkeeper, and while everyone was debating whether

Kepa

or

De Gea

, suddenly the game with Simón's feet (24 years old) fell in love with the coach, who has put him in the last 17 games .

Not even the blunder against Croatia in the second round of the European Championship has made him change his course.

Aymeric laporte

After verifying in the March convocation of this year that

Sergio Ramos

was "stiff", as was heard in Las Rozas that day, Luis Enrique threw the Federation into the maelstrom of nationalizing Aymeric Laporte on the fast track. Again an impulse, a very risky bet because, despite the obvious value of the player, the truth is that in Guardiola's City last year he played 15 starting games of the 38 possible in the League and, in addition, he had said "no" to that option in the past. In addition, he was (is) a left-handed central defender, and had to settle, in principle, alongside

Pau Torres

, also left-handed, one of the coach's bets from the start. Since June this year, he has started all 11 games. The rotations have been managed by Pau Torres,

Eric García

(another bet of the technician today somewhat devalued) and

Iñigo Martínez

.

Dani Olmo

He cannot be in this League of Nations because he is injured, but he is one of Luis Enrique's permanent fixtures.

It is true that it was Robert Moreno, in his last appearance as a coach (November 2019) who made him debut, but then, since September 2020, Luis Enrique has made him his.

When he was summoned by Moreno, Olmo was playing in Croatia.

That is, in a very secondary League.

His jump to Leipzig, which in the summer of 2020 reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, put him a little more in the focus of the general public, but this German team is still a secondary that, nevertheless, has one of the fixed for Spain.

Ferran Torres celebrates a goal against Italy.AFP

Ferran torres

The guy with the best scoring average than all the great Europeans in his national teams (12 in 21 games) is also a bet by Luis Enrique.

She fell in love with him during the 19/20 season at Valencia, and when he returned to the position of coach he made him essential.

Like

Guardiola

in the City, he sees him as a center forward because, despite his speed and overflow, what is most striking is his ease of seeing the door, something innate that justifies, for example, in the eyes of the coach, the absence of a pure 9 on this list.

Ferran, like the rest of his companions, was not, in any case, one of those names that people had in their heads.

But...

Gavi - Yeremy Pino

First. Just 200 minutes in First. Just 17 years old. Barely 173 centimeters tall ... Barely, barely, barely ... Barely anything, the Asturian must have thought, who has had to deal with criticism from last Thursday until this Wednesday, just one week, when the youngest debutant of the history of Spain displayed a football in San Siro that silenced the voices against. "It doesn't matter how old you are, you don't look at your ID here," the aligner constantly repeats, who has put that dose of madness that accompanies him on the bench in the Barça boy. The second: a bullet from Villarreal that, until this call, has completed six games as a starter in the First Division (it is true that he participated in 24 in the 20/21 campaign). He is 18 years old and he also looks like he has come to stay or, something that Luis Enrique likes much more,compete with Olmo and Ferrán.

Of those 27 debutants, most are very young.

This is Luis Enrique and these are his (blessed) follies.

Ah!

And one last sentence from that July 19, 2018.

-I don't think he has to be nice.

He has also kept his word.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • sports

  • Uefa Nations League

  • Spain Soccer Team

  • Luis Enrique

UEFA Nations LeagueLuis Enrique: "It has been exciting to see the Spanish celebrate, carry the flag with pride"

UEFA Nations LeagueLuis Enrique: "I don't read you because I know much more about football than you do"

UEFA Nations LeagueLuis Enrique and the Spain of who's who

See links of interest

  • La Palma volcano

  • Last News

  • Translator

  • What

  • 2021 business calendar

  • Home THE WORLD TODAY

  • Master investigative journalism

  • FC Bayern Munich - Barça

  • Semifinal, live: Belgium - France