New boss Enrique ends the Real and Barca era
LUIS ENRIQUE was a man of few compromises, down in the depths of Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on Thursday night. He swept in, spoke in Spanish at a machine gun pace for eight and a half minutes, stood up and left. ‘I’m sorry there is no translation,’ said his press secretary, who marched out after him, evidently unwilling to summarise what the boss said.
The intense look on Luis Enrique’s face told the story. At one stage, a discussion opened up about his team selection for the 4-1 win over Wales. ‘I can invent a side. I can invent what I want,’ said Enrique. ‘I have the power to call any Spanish player and these are my chosen ones.’
This is very much the way of the 48-year-old manager who, if anything, seems too young and in too much of a tearing hurry for the pace of international football. He has been tearing things up, with no sacred cows, since he was appointed to manage the national side, three months ago.
The dual domination of the Barcelona and Real Madrid has been swept away now. In Cardiff, the starting line-up, albeit experimental, included only two players from the old duopoly: Real’s Sergio Ramos and Dani Ceballos.
The XI which finished the match was a composite of eight clubs, from Chelsea to Celta de Vigo, Wolverhampton Wanderers to Valencia.
The Barca influence is most conspicuous by its absence. Sergio Busquets is likely to be the only member of the Catalonian side to start against England in Seville, where the absence of Jordi Alba is controversial.
The defender and Luis Enrique fell out spectacularly when the player was relegated to the margins when the manager adopted a 4-3-3 system at Barcelona. On Spain duty at that time, Jordi Alba spoke of having the ‘confidence’ of then national coach Julen Lopetegui — ‘something I don’t have at Barcelona’. Worse still, he said of Lopetegui, who is now at Real Madrid: ‘I appreciate that he is up front and to my face about things.’ This was an unforgivable sleight on Luis Enrique, it seems.
Asked about the player’s omission, Enrique was implacable. ‘I hope not to upset anyone and if I have offended I’m sorry. I’m just looking to pick the best team.’ Alba is Spain’s best left-back yet there seems no way back. Luis Enrique’s directness extends to the style of football. Spain’s desultory World Cup, capped by the defeat on penalties by Russia in the last 16 in Moscow, had brought the very notion of tikitaka into disrepute.
Luis Enrique has kept it, yet imbued it with far more urgency in an opening three games which have yielded 12 goals. The man being celebrated by the newspaper Marca on Friday for restoring Spain’s ‘Midas touch’ operates with three strikers and is not inclined to flood the team with midfielders, as his predecessors liked to do. If Cardiff was anything to go by, the meritocracy has given rise to new energy. Spain were even chasing the ball down when 3-0 ahead.
Left-sided forward Paco Alcacer took the plaudits. His two goals took his tally to nine from his last nine shots for Spain and Borussia Dortmund. He seems reborn in Germany having left a life on the sidelines at Barcelona which he says was making him unhappy.
You sense from some of the older members of the team that Spain feel stung into proving themselves because of all that was said about them after the World Cup finals.
‘We are pleased because we are coming from a disappointment in the World Cup and we know we have to recover our place,’ said Cesar Azpilicueta.
But having helped the team relocate what they had lost, Luis Enrique seems only to be looking up the road. ‘Our goal is to play equal from minute one to 95,’ he said. ‘If there is a rival who possesses the same game and can take the ball, we will suffer. But the players have easily assimilated what we have asked them to do.’