Spain's World Cup Journey Continues Amidst Midfield Doubts

At the Embassy Suites on Broad Street, downtown Chattanooga, the vans have pulled out for the last time. The day before departure, like every day, a small crowd of kids had climbed barriers and trees trying to get a glimpse of Spain’s players. A girl stood on a ladder and held a placard in each hand, raised above the fence. One said: “I’ve been here three weeks. I know you’ve seen me!” The other ran: “Please come out!” On Wednesday afternoon, Tennessee time, they did. They won’t be back.

Spain are leaving their base behind and heading to Los Angeles and, if all goes well, from there to Dallas. They do so with more doubts than there were before the World Cup started. Well, Fabián Ruiz says, maybe on the outside: inside, at the training ground where the last session has just finished before they fly west, it’s a little different.

Fabián doesn’t use many words and isn’t really given time to do so, but one he comes back to is: natural. The debates? They’re for other people. Yet Fabián admits: “Sometimes things don’t go the way we would like; we’re working to ensure they do.”

For Spain, the opening to the tournament was dominated by the fitness of Lamine Yamal, at 18 already an icon who eclipses all else – and who had been out since April. There was a sense that everyone was waiting for him and that it wasn’t until he was back that they could begin. All four of the wingers have had problems, in fact, and that cuts to the heart of Spain’s identity, the twist on tiki taka that Luis de la Fuente brought. So, too, does the midfield. And that’s where Fabián comes in. Or, perhaps, where he goes out.

He has not started since the opener against Cape Verde. Sometimes it has felt a little bit easy to leave Fabián out. “If his name wasn’t Fabián, everyone would talk about him more,” De la Fuente once lamented. If he talked about himself a bit more they might too, but that’s not really him. Softly spoken, he doesn’t always get noticed and has no lobby, although there was a nice gag the other day when he suggested that a TV channel subtitle him in response to another channel doing the same to his mum on a recent documentary. Chari Peña has a strong Andalucían accent and Fabián is proud of Andalucía and more proud of her.

From the small town of Los Palacios – known for producing bumper cars, wicker chairs and tomatoes – Chari raised Fabián alone, working as a cleaner at the same training ground where her son made his way through the Betis youth system. Some days she would take him to sessions at 7am, when she had to clock on, leave him asleep in the car and go back to wake him up when it was time to train. Everything he achieves is for her, he says. It has been a lot. He is a European champion three times over: winner of Euro 24, where he was arguably Spain’s outstanding player, and the past two Champions Leagues with Paris Saint-Germain.

De la Fuente claimed that Spain have “the six best midfielders in the world”, which is just the kind of thing De la Fuente would claim. The difficulty, though, is figuring out how to make them all fit, or which combination works best. And what condition they are in: like Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal, Mikel Merino and Fabián missed much of the season through injury.

“It has been hard to get my pace and rhythm back but I am 100% now,” Fabián says. “I think they’re 100% but I can only speak for myself: I feel in good form. There were long-term injuries and it is true that to start with it is hard to get up to pace and adapt when you come back: I struggled with that. But by the time I got here, I had played various games in a row for PSG at the highest level without having to stop; the injury has been forgotten.”

At the World Cup, Pedri and Rodri have started every game. The question appears to be who plays alongside them. In the opening game it was Fabián. In the next it was Dani Olmo. In the third it was Merino. Who it will be next, against Austria, is not certain; what it will mean isn’t, either. That is the conundrum the coach has to address.

Fabián’s inclusion meant shifting from the 4-2-3-1 that was De la Fuente’s preference to 4-3-3 or playing Pedri higher, where he had found it harder to run the game. That Fabián slipped from the side seemed to be as much about shape as performance, although he insists: “I don’t think it’s about Pedri’s position [that means] the game is slower.

“From the outside I don’t know how people look at it; on the inside we see it as something that’s totally natural. We know that any of the central midfielders can play. We can play together or separately, it doesn’t matter. It’s not important who plays; it’s important that we support each other. And I don’t think it changes anything. The idea we have is the same and we all have the ability to make that idea work. We have different characteristics but I think at a collective level the idea is the same.”

Those entrusted with leading, though, are not. At the European Championship, Spain had a kind of triumvirate: Álvaro Morata led through empathy; Dani Carvajal through competitiveness, character; Rodri through football. Only one remains.

“Álvaro and Dani were two very important captains for us and had a lot of weight in the team,” Fabián says. “But there are others who have the experience. The captains. Rodri, the first captain. Unai Simon. Mikel Oyarzabal who seems shy but he is someone you listen to, someone who is imposing when he talks because he always has the right opinion. Aymeric Laporte, too.”

And what about you? No one else has two successive Champions Leagues, after all. “Well …” Fabián says, which sort of says it all. “I’ve always said I am reserved. I am not someone who much likes to show his face in public, to speak much, but within the group I always give my little bit to help my teammates, especially the younger ones.

“Whatever the manager decides, we’re totally ready to help the team on the pitch or off it. The best thing about this team is the family we are. We trust in what we’re doing. We’re 100% now and we hope we can show it.”