De la Fuente Claims Spain Have the Best Midfield in the World Before Portugal Test

Luis de la Fuente sat down on the third floor of the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, looked at a laptop of questions submitted by members of the public, and cracked up laughing. “You’ve filtered these, right?” he asked. Some of the players were still out on the training pitch in the sunshine below, the same ground where Bebeto rocked the baby in 1994. Spain were preparing for their last-16 meeting with Portugal and their manager was in an expansive mood.

The resulting conversation, conducted by Guardian journalist Sid Lowe using questions submitted by readers, offered an unusually direct view inside the mind of the man leading one of the tournament favourites. De la Fuente spoke about his players, his philosophy, his favourite foods and the definition of genius. He also made a claim that he acknowledged was not subtle.

“In my opinion, and I say this with the greatest of respect to everyone, we have the best midfield in the world,” he said. “We have two players per position who are the best players. I can list them: Rodrigo, Zubimendi, Fabian, Pedri, Olmo, Merino, Baena, Gavi,” he said, adding Fermin to the list too, absent through injury. “I have probably left someone out and he will get angry; don’t get angry. I remember you all.”

He paused, aware of the comparison looming. Spain’s 2010 World Cup winners built their triumph on a midfield widely regarded as the finest ever assembled. Xavi, Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Busquets: the generation that won two European Championships and a World Cup across three tournaments between 2008 and 2012, playing a style of football that changed how the game was thought about.

“That was an extraordinary midfield as well, it’s true,” De la Fuente said. “Football changes, but I would put us at almost the same level.”

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The best memory of the 2010 tournament, for De la Fuente as for millions of Spanish football supporters, is the goal that decided it. Andres Iniesta’s extra-time winner against the Netherlands in Johannesburg. The image of Iniesta ripping off his shirt, the crowd erupting, a nation celebrating.

For everything the moment meant to Spain, there could be no other answer. “It has to be Iniesta’s goal,” he said. “It’s not very original but that’s the image of the World Cup for us. I would have been at home watching it. I have always been very into the national team. Whenever the Seleccion played, it was an event at my parents’ house. My parents would watch, my brothers and sisters, people would come round to watch. That’s in Haro, La Rioja.”

De la Fuente grew up watching that team. He now manages its successor. That continuity is something he carries as an honour rather than a burden, and when he speaks about the current group of players, the warmth is genuine.

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One reader asked him specifically about Pedri, the Barcelona and Spain midfielder who has spent years confounding analysts trying to explain how he does what he does. The theory offered by the questioner: that Pedri perpetually appears about to lose the ball but never actually does.

De la Fuente’s response was immediate and delighted.

“He’s a magician, a magician. It’s quality, talent, technical ability. I had a teacher at school who told us that the definition of technique, talent is: completing tasks of maximum difficulty without apparent effort. That is technique. And Pedri is a maestro in that. He does things that are extremely difficult and it seems easy. Very few people can do that. He plays with an astonishing ease. He sees passes the rest of us don’t see. That’s something geniuses have.”

Pedri missed significant portions of the season with injury and was not universally considered a certain starter coming into the World Cup. De la Fuente’s insistence on his centrality to Spain’s approach has been validated. When Pedri is at his best, Spain’s patterns become more fluid, their build-up more unpredictable, their possession game more dangerous.

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The tournament has presented Spain with other challenges beyond the tactical. Their first match, against Cape Verde, looked routine on paper. The result of that game drew considerable attention, and De la Fuente was asked whether, given how Cape Verde later performed against Argentina, Spain should be seen in a different light for their showing.

“I’m someone who if he has to offer an opinion likes to do so with a lot of information to hand,” he said. “Before the tournament I said it was going to be a historic World Cup,” he said, predicting that national teams without a big name or a media profile would find their place at it. “We would end up recognising how important they are. And one of those is Cape Verde. We were not surprised by their performance.”

It is a manager carefully not conceding a point to critics while simultaneously avoiding the trap of retroactive boasting. De la Fuente knew what Cape Verde were. Spain dealt with them. The argument ends there.

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Spain’s upcoming opponent, Portugal, comes with a specific individual challenge for Lamine Yamal. The teenage Barcelona forward, already one of the most talked-about players at this World Cup, has faced Portugal’s Nuno Mendes four times previously: three times in club football, and once in the Nations League final of 2025, which Spain lost on penalties.

A reader asked what advice De la Fuente would offer Yamal ahead of the fifth meeting with Mendes. The manager’s response treated the challenge as a story of growth rather than rivalry.

“Lamine is a competitor and he will have the desire to remove the thorn from his side from that [Nations League] game,” he said. A long time has passed, he noted, and “Lamine has grown a lot. Lamine is not the player he was a year ago; he’s another player, more mature, more assured, he reads the games better, logically. With every stage of his development, every experience, he will be more complete. So what would I say to him? ‘Be yourself, enjoy football, with the responsibility that comes with it, the responsibility that you take on, but be yourself.'”

The description of Yamal as a player who has matured markedly in twelve months is widely shared among those who have watched him. He is eighteen, already carrying the label of the sport’s next great figure, and De la Fuente’s consistent message is that the best thing Yamal can do is focus on playing football rather than managing his own mythology.

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The conversation moved into territory that revealed something of De la Fuente’s character as a man rather than just a coach. He was asked about his favourite word in Spanish. The answer came without hesitation.

“The word I like best is ‘respect’. With respect as the starting point, you can build anything. The edifice of coexistence is built upon foundations of respect. I read that one day, and it’s true. The key word in my life is ‘respect’. And it’s the word I most use with the players, too. And without actually using it, without actually saying it, it’s still reflected in everything; in the decisions, in the behaviour, in the attitude.”

It explains, in part, how De la Fuente manages the inevitable discontent of squad members who are not playing. Spain have taken a large group to this tournament and not all of them can start. The question of how to maintain the commitment and morale of players who are not in the eleven is one that consumes coaches at every level of the game. For De la Fuente, the answer is grounded in that principle.

He gave the example of Borja Iglesias, the striker who has been a trusted squad member without accumulating much playing time. “Borja is a very important player. He’s a player who is preparing, working so that he is ready whenever he is needed,” De la Fuente said. He described a moment against Austria where he was about to substitute Iglesias on but the game changed before he could. The anecdote was told with the careful consideration of a manager who knows every player is listening, even the ones not starting.

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A reader asked the hardest thing about being the Seleccionador. De la Fuente’s answer was a single word, delivered with a smile.

“Seleccionar! Look, I always say that we are coaches, but the most important role we have to play, and the hardest too, is to select the players. In the end we talk about technical and tactical concepts… well, yes, OK… we coaches all have that grounding, that foundation. You can have an idea, fine, but then you have to select the players that best fit that idea, that best adapt, and that’s the hard part. You have to choose, and the hardest thing when you name a squad is leaving out someone who could be here perfectly.”

It is an honest answer about a part of the job that coaches rarely address directly. The squad announcement that gets the most media coverage is the one that names the players going to the tournament. The more painful decisions are the ones made in private, about players who were close but not selected, who prepared for months and were left out in the final call.

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On the subject of Mikel Oyarzabal, De la Fuente was revealing in a different way. The striker, who has played across multiple positions for Spain and has consistently been one of the squad’s most intelligent footballers, was asked whether he is a natural centre-forward or something more hybrid in his positioning.

“He is a top footballer with a unique ability to interpret and play every position,” De la Fuente said. “He understands every aspect of the game, the moments of a match, the decisions he has to take. ” One day, De la Fuente added, Oyarzabal will be a coach: he sees the game that well.

When a manager says a player will become a coach one day, it is not a throwaway compliment. It is an acknowledgement that the player’s intelligence about the game operates at a level beyond execution. Oyarzabal, in De la Fuente’s estimation, is already thinking about football the way coaches think about it.

The session ended with the lighter questions. What is the colour of happiness? “Happiness is colour, life, health, and it’s being able to enjoy moments with family and friends; that’s the colour of happiness.” Tortilla with or without onion? “Without! Without onion. My mother doesn’t like onion but at home my dad and my brothers and sisters always did. I don’t. I inherited my mum’s taste.”

He laughed. The players were still warming down on the Cotton Bowl pitch below. Portugal were waiting. The World Cup was getting to the stage where Spain’s claims, bold as they are, would need to be tested against the strongest opposition remaining. De la Fuente is confident his team is ready. He has the players to back the claim up, a philosophy built on respect and a midfield he considers the best in the world. The tournament is about to find out whether he is right.