Eduardo J. Castelao Madrid

Madrid

Updated Sunday, March 24, 2024-02:14

  • Chronicle. De la Fuente thinks about Brazil and his laboratory Spain falls to Colombia in London

  • Reactions. The spring of Cubarsí and the resignation of Luis de la Fuente: "You learn more from defeats"

Contrary to what is usually the case, the team slept in London on Friday night. Far from running to the airport,

Luis de la Fuente

and his boys rested at the hotel, just a few minutes from the field, and returned this Saturday morning to then train, with open doors, in the afternoon. In Las Rozas there were people, yes, but not many, because this team, like almost all of them, goes quite unnoticed in the

interwar

periods

, that is, in the periods that pass between one major championship and another. The spotlight will only return to the national team on June 15, when it debuts in the Euro Cup against Croatia. If anything, the day after tomorrow people, from their vacation spots, will watch the friendly against Brazil because it is Brazil, and because it is Vinicius, and everything that surrounds the Madrid player is of interest. But little more. Nobody remembers the test against Colombia anymore.

"Test" has never been better written. Saving the spine (

Unai Simón, Carvajal, Le Normand, Rodrigo, Olmo or Morata

) for next Tuesday's clash, the sole intention of playing against Colombia was to see players. So much so that, of the 17 players who had some minutes in Stratford, only two or three will start in the Euro Cup. The lineup was:

Raya, Pedro Porro, Vivian, Laporte, Grimaldo, Zubimendi, Merino, Sarabia, Oyarzabal, Joselu and Gerard Moreno

. Then

Remiro, Baena, Morata, Nico Williams, Cubarsí and Lamine Yamal

came out . Of all of them, only Laporte, Merino, Morata and, if anything, Lamine Yamal, can be guessed in a typical eleven to start the tournament to be played in Germany.

"Of course we don't like to lose, but we have several positive conclusions," said the coach in the London Olympic press room. The positive conclusions point to Vivian, the Athletic Bilbao centre-back, highly valued by the coaching staff despite relying on the ball that

Luis Díaz

took from him and which ended in the Colombian goal. Gerard Moreno, who provides many solutions to the team on the offensive side, and Grimaldo, owner, a newcomer, were also in a good place for all the set pieces, including the corners from both profiles and the direct free kick on the edge of the goal. area in the death rattles of the pate. The tests with Pedro Porro or Sarabia were not so good, their band was somewhat weak throughout the night.

The doubt

As for Cubarsí, who barely had 10 minutes, De la Fuente is drawing conclusions from the training sessions. He already had the idea of ​​not exposing the boy too much in this window, and in fact it does not seem likely that he will start against Brazil, a team with enough potential to overwhelm any center back. There are those who think within the concentration that it would be exposing such a young boy too much. It so happens that De la Fuente has already shown that he can get a child to play without problems. The

boy, the second youngest to debut with the senior team after Lamine Yamal, has fallen on his feet in Las Rozas

due to his shyness and modesty, a not inconsiderable issue in a coaching staff that highly values ​​the human qualities that allow a player integrate into a group without big egos.

At the Bernabéu, then, the day after tomorrow, you will see a much more recognizable version of the team, something similar to the block that Luis de la Fuente built in one year and

that lost again on Friday, 12 months after having done so. in Glasgow

, in March 2023, on the road to the European Championship. Two setbacks in 11 games coached. The coach is not good at traveling to the UK.