How Hampden shock poked the Spanish tiger

Graham Hunter was embedded with the Spain team for every step of their journey to Euro 24 glory. This is the inside story

Rodri in the palm of Andy Robertson’s hand during Scotland’s 2-0 win

I wonder where you were on March 28, 2023, and what conclusions you drew?

At Hampden, roaring into the sodden night and taunting what seemed like powderpuff Spaniards?

Down the pub and dismissing La Roja as a spent force?

At home on the couch, enjoying the moment with the cautious conclusion that form is temporary but class permanent? 

Did you indulge in a bit of Rodri-baiting (it doesn’t make you go blind) after he complained that, despite losing to two Scott McTominay goals, what Spain were put through was ‘a bit rubbish’?

Whichever it was, here’s the update. 

From that day until this, Spain’s record is: played 19, won 17, drawn 1, lost 1, scored 52, conceded 13, trophies 2. 

Conclusion: don’t poke the sleeping tiger. 

The draw and the defeat came in friendlies, against Colombia and Brazil respectively; the trophies are the 2023 Nations League (where Italy, the reigning European champions, and Croatia, World Cup semi-finalists in Qatar, were beaten in the semi-final and final, respectively) and Euro 2024 (where La Roja defeated Italy, Germany, France and England).

And to end the update, Spain’s record across their last seven tournaments reads: semi-finalists (Euro 2020), finalists (Tokyo Olympics), finalists (2021 Nations League), quarter-finalists (World Cup 2022), winners (2023 Nations League), winners (Euro 2024) and today, in Paris, they play for a gold medal against the host nation.

Unlike seven of Spain’s starting XI at Hampden (plus four of the subs that night), I was with La Roja every single day of their glorious Euro campaign in Germany and, thanks to match reporting, watching training, off-the-record chats and over 50 interviews across the 36 days during which they wowed everyone — and beat everyone — I’m going to take you inside the way in which coach Luis de la Fuente, Rodri, Alvaro Morata and co. achieved their record-breaking triumph.

First stop: Enschede, Netherlands. June 2023

Nations League Finals

Spain 2 Italy 1; Spain 0 Croatia 0 (Spain win 5-4 on pens)

Luis de la Fuente with the Nations League trophy. Spain’s players backed their under-pressure manager after media briefings against him

Spain’s Basque coach might have erred in making eight changes from the starting XI between his first match in charge (Spain 3 Norway 0) and the defeat at Hampden, but within the squad his credit remained huge.

There had been over-eager ‘in-the-know’ briefings from a clutch of egotistical radio reporters that De la Fuente was in danger of losing his job. The reaction of his players – many of whom had won trophies at Under-19 and Under-21 levels under the former Athletic Club full-back – was near unanimous: Hands off our coach!

In Holland, Spain won their semi-final with Italy 2-1, and then emerged victorious from a penalty shoot-out with Croatia after 120 minutes of goalless football. Dani Carvajal’s sudden-death Panenka penalty was the clincher. First trophy won.

Oh, and Player of the Tournament? Rodri.

Tbilisi, Georgia and Granada, Andalusia. September 2023

Euro 2024 Qualifying

Georgia 1 Spain 7; Spain 6 Cyprus 0

With a national-team trophy under their belts, Spain’s players walked with a strut. They smashed in 13 goals against Georgia and Cyprus, scored by 10 different players. Lamine Yamal debuted and hit the net, two months after his 16th birthday.

Gavi told me that, after Hampden, the players made a pact to win every remaining qualifying game and top the group.

Donaueschingen, Black Forest, southern Germany. June 9, 2024

Euro 2024

Storm clouds over the training pitch would not prove to be a bad omen for Spain

Spain were used to inauspicious beginnings to tournament victories.

In 2008, they were booed out of the country by their own fans en route to the Euros in Austria, the tournament that started their historic tournament treble.

In 2010, they lost to Switzerland in the first match – at the time no team had ever recovered from that position to win a World Cup – and Andres Iniesta, their talisman, was injured. By the final, he was scoring the winner.

And 2024 sold us all a dummy. When Spain trundled into their Öschberghof Golf Hotel resort (rooms from €270-€650) late that Sunday night, the weather was cataclysmic. Biblical rain and the type of vast, horizon-wide sheet lightning which induces elemental fear. It didn’t augur well. 

The Library, Öschberghof Golf Hotel. June 10

Euro 2024

Carvajal and Morata both scored in the opening-match demolition of Croatia

De la Fuente’s use of language is different from what we are used to in the UK, I think. He tells me: 

“We’re here to fulfil an obligation to our profession, which is to compete and to achieve something big. For me, success is the result of work, dedication, effort, sacrifice. If you give everything, you never fail. That’s what success is about for me.”

The 62-year-old La Liga-winning left-back adds something which will prove to be key: “Beyond technical or tactical aspects, the human aspect is the most important one. In group management you have to create enthusiasm, they have to see you feeling enthusiastic, moved, happy. You can pass all of that on. We speak a lot about being a family. Forming a family helps you overcome the inevitable tough moments.”

De la Fuente calls Dani Carvajal: “…insatiable – a born competitor. He’s a Spartan, someone prepared for the fight.”

Carvajal, who opened the scoring in Madrid’s Wembley Champions League win, tells me: “I haven’t been much of a goalscorer throughout my career, but I scored seven this season. A lot of pressure has now gone – I knew that I had this goalscorer talent inside of me!” 

Just before half-time against Croatia, he volleys home the 3-0 goal. 

Finally, Captain Morata. Good guy, generous fella, perpetually pilloried, beneficiary of expert sports psychology, loved by his fellow players. At that moment, Spain’s fourth-top scorer – hitting the net at a better rate than either Raúl or El Niño Torres. Two-handicap golfer. “I have fought a lot to be where I am but, as you already know, if I was forced to pick one or the other, I’d choose Spain winning this Euro ahead of me being picked in the squad. But, now, we are here to win the Euro!” 

Düsseldorf, Germany. June 24

Euro 2024, Group B

Spain 3 Croatia 0; Spain 1 Italy 0; Spain 1 Albania 0

By the time La Roja return to the Ostberghof hotel to play a little golf (Morata and Rodri, most of all) they’ll have travelled 2,140 miles via Berlin, Gelsenkirchen and Düsseldorf; beaten Croatia, Italy and Albania; scored five, conceded none and set themselves up for a re-match with Georgia in the last 16.

The themes of family, and all-for-one which the players and De la Fuente have been hammering home stand out to me. Against Italy, Aymeric Laporte, who’s not played or trained for just short of a month (and who plays in a lesser league, in Saudi Arabia), is told on the morning of the match that Nacho’s not going to make it. Laporte stands in and, despite looking red-faced for 15 minutes, excels.

Dani Olmo’s been out for weeks, gradually re-introduced and looking rusty against Croatia and Italy, but starts against Albania and supplies a lovely assist for Ferran Torres – himself very short of game time for Barcelona – who tucks away a superb, first-time finish from the edge of the box.

Marc Cucurella might not have made the squad at all if José Gayà hadn’t been injured for Valencia in late May, but he plays like a left-footed Carles Puyol – haring about, solving his own problems and those of his team-mates, tackling, grinning, overlapping, taking attacking risks, throwing himself in front of shots. Gary Neville speculates that he’s one of the reasons La Roja mightn’t be good enough to win the Euro. ‘Cucu’ treats that verdict like Popeye treated spinach. He’s benched Alex Grimaldo (one defeat all season for Bayer Leverkusen, plus 12 goals and 20 assists from left-back while winning the club’s first-ever domestic double) but guess who’s Grimaldo’s best chum in the squad? ‘Cucu’.

Meanwhile, Lamine Yamal, a little genius, is being supervised doing his homework assignments to submit for his end-of-year school exams. Yes, you read that right. 

Spain deliver their best performance in a 1-0 win over Italy that could have ended in a far, far heavier defeat for the Azzurri. Coach Luciano Spalletti: “Everyone would love to copy Spain. They've been playing the best football for the longest time now. They caused us more problems than the scoreline suggests – let's not beat around the bush.”

RheinEnergieStadion, Cologne. June 30

Euro 2024, Round of 16

Spain 4 Georgia 1

Rodri is mobbed by substitutes and staff after scoring the equaliser against Georgia

By the time Spain get back to the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen after their round-of-16 match, they’ll have traveled 2,700 tournament miles. But thanks to La Roja securing top spot in Group B after two matches, the vast majority of their key players have had 10 days without playing, and minimal intense training.

Georgia’s historic win over Portugal was four days ago and in the second half against Spain, they fold. Two days prior to the match, I ask Rodri about the role goal-scoring plays in his game. “It’s something I’ve worked on and I’ve been improving. Scoring isn’t my responsibility, but if I have that ability, it is my responsibility to exploit it. Over the years you realise you can appear in areas of the pitch where you can be decisive, not just through goals, but also with assists, being more influential in the final third of the pitch.”

Six minutes before half-time he scores with a left-footed drive to make it Spain 1 Georgia 1. He heads for the bench, and substitute players and almost all the staff head for the pitch to mob him. Against Georgia. The team they recently beat 7-1. A lesson in the nerves that knockout football can generate. A visual emphasis of this group’s rock-solid unity and ‘all-for-one’ spirit. An indelible visual image.

Best goal? Perhaps the goal of the tournament? Fabian Ruíz. Under pressure on the edge of his own box, flicking the ball between his own legs, turning, steadying and kicking (hello Gregory’s Girl fans) a sumptuous heat-seeking pass to Nico Williams, who dances, dribbles and thrashes it home for 3-1. After the match, I ask the Athletic Club winger about it. “I feel that I’ve done something that my parents can be proud of,” says the guy whose mother and father traversed the Sahara barefoot and without water in order to escape persecution and reach Spain as hopeful immigrants.  

Basically, just up the road: Stuttgart. July 5

Euro 2024, Quarter-Final

Spain 2 Germany 1

Mikel Merino jumps like Jordan in the 119th minute to break hosts Germany

Spain can drive from basecamp to the stadium where I covered my second-ever La Roja competitive match (World Cup 2006, Spain 3, Tunisia 1) in 90 minutes – less time than it took to eliminate the tournament hosts.

It’s partly a story of wee Tony Taylor. The English referee’s failure to red card Toni Kroos (in what proves to be the midfielder’s final competitive match) was heinous. But, swings and roundabouts, he applies the tournament guideline that a wayward arm which is below the ‘quarter past the hour’ position won’t be given as a penalty. Cucurella, who inadvertently blocks Jamal Musiala’s shot, takes another step towards being Spain’s ‘jack in the box’ player. An award he’ll officially secure over the coming two-and-a-half matches.

Swings and roundabouts again — could Taylor have given Carvajal a straight red for his foul on Musiala in the dying seconds, instead of a second yellow? It wouldn’t have been totally out of context.  De la Fuente’s ‘Spartan’, born competitor, opted for an all-or-nothing gamble in a millisecond of cynical but successful calculation. Free-kick, sent off, but Germany staunched and Spain through.

Taking one for the team? In La Roja’s case, taking one for ‘the family’.

Post match, I’m sneaking down the right-hand side of the player-tunnel, trying to stay out of range of the cameras’ perpetually greedy eyes, hugging the wall, when Morata grabs me, Nacho and Carvajal join in and I’m shaken around as they yell, ‘Vamos Graaaa-hammm!’ A wholly unintentional, deeply embarrassing and undeniably emotional moment.

Swings and roundabouts — Pedri was hacked off the pitch by Kroos but his deputy, Olmo, scores one and makes the winner for Mikel Merino, who told me: “I have to be honest, for the first two seconds I wasn’t aware what was happening. I heard nothing, complete silence. Then I realised it was a goal when I saw all my team-mates running towards me. It was utterly amazing.”

De la Fuente tells the world: “My players are insatiable.” 

What happened next? On Monday, Graham Hunter takes you inside the Spain camp as they reach the final four in Germany