Spain in Qatar 2022: Where did it all go wrong at the World Cup?
From mentality to style, Spain's issues are deep-rooted.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” Albert Einstein once said. As Spain recycled possession over once and again, it was a saying that came to mind.
This young Spain team is not yet at its peak, but humiliation and defeat to Morocco is another tough blow for this team to take, and one which sees them continue a rollercoaster ride of emotions having been the victors in a 7-0 thrashing of Costa Rica less than a fortnight ago.
Where did it all go wrong for Spain? Here, we will take a look at the mentality that cost Spain, as well as the style and tactics, and whether it did really go that wrong at all. Finally, we’ll consider what next for Spain and whoever the coach may be to lead them into EURO 2024.
Mentality
Was Spain’s mentality all wrong? This seems to have been Luis Enrique’s greatest mistake at this World Cup, yet at the same time, nobody saw it coming.
Building upon EURO 2020 and Spain’s success in that tournament, the coach saw an opportunity to build a team, more than just a squad. He identified the possibility of forming a “piña” as they say in Spain with one of the youngest groups of players that were assembled in Qatar.
His streams reflected that. They looked to take the pressure off the players and divert attention away from them and onto himself and his role as the coach. After a 7-0 opening win over Costa Rica, it looked like a remarkable success.
The issue came in that opening 90 minutes of the tournament. Many of this Spain squad had already had the confidence and ego boost of last summer and felt more comfortable on the international stage. This 7-0 win only help to fuel that further.
A 1-1 draw with Germany followed and few questions were asked, but the 2-1 defeat to Japan was swept aside. Rodri, an elite player accustomed to beating all that come before him with Manchester City, said so much in the press conference before taking on Morocco.
Yet, that lack of self-criticism seemed to be what cost Spain. The issues and mistakes made against Germany and Japan were what would go on to prove deadly against Morocco. There were warning signs, but they went unheeded.
The issues and mistakes made against Germany and Japan were what would go on to prove deadly against Morocco.
It raises questions over Luis Enrique’s approach. Could his players have benefitted from being under a little more pressure? This isn’t a context which the former Barcelona coach is particularly used to himself. His time at Barcelona was spent with some of the game’s most experienced and proven winners, while his previous spells in charge of the likes of Celta Vigo and Roma saw players exceeding low expectations. He wasn’t accustomed to taking charge of a group of players under immense pressure without being used to it.
In assuming that they needed to diverge attention away from them, he could have committed a fatal error. The likes of Pedri and Gavi are no strangers to having weight on their shoulders, while others like Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets and Marco Asensio have been there and won that.
Luis Enrique judged this one wrong, but it was not his streams that were his biggest mistake, as El Chiringuito or his critics in the Madrid-based media may have you believe. Introducing Pablo Sarabia and Carlos Soler for the sole purpose of taking penalties in the final moments of extra-time were far more costly calls. Neither player has been heavily involved in the tournament, with these four minutes being Sarabia’s first at the tournament, and you could tell as they stepped up to take their spot-kicks.
“I’ve told the players to take 1,000 penalties with their clubs, you can’t train for it only with your national team,” Luis Enrique said before the knock-out game against Morocco. Whether his players followed that advice remains to be seen, but what was even more telling was the second part of his answer, “you can’t train for the pressure of the moment, but you can manage it.” That may well be true for Luis Enrique himself, a fierce competitor who would take a bull by the horns if he had to. The same cannot be said for many characters within this Spain squad.
And that is where many of the calls for Sergio Ramos’ involvement came from. Sergio Busquets is not a brave and vocal leader on the pitch, he’s a more reserved character who leads by example and demands respect without necessarily inspiring. The other dressing room heavyweights include the controversial figure of Jordi Alba, and Atlético Madrid captain Koke and Chelsea captain César Azpilicueta who played bit-part roles from the bench. Ramos may not have helped (his last two penalties for Spain were both missed), but Enrique gave his critics a stick with which to beat him if things went wrong with several of his own decisions.
Style
While this Spain squad looked vastly different to the one which crashed out to Russia in the 2018 World Cup at the same stage and in the same circumstances, the style that saw Spain eliminated bared many similarities.
One of the biggest issues that Spain encountered was that they struggled to play the ball out whenever Sergio Busquets was covered. It was an approach which benefitted Germany, Japan and Morocco. Blocking the passing route to the number five prevented Spain from recreating the free-flowing attacking movements which had swept aside Costa Rica by keeping the ball moving from back to front.
Albert Blaya wrote a superb piece of analysis for Relevo (which you can read here) about this exact issue even before the Morocco game. Against Morocco, we saw it more prominent than in any other game. In the first half, the midfield battle was an even encounter but one in which Spain struggled to open up any spaces for themselves.
In the second period, Spain began to surpass the midfield completely. Rather than going through the middle, looking to play through Pedri and Gavi dropping deep when Busquets was covered, Spain instead looked for long balls over the top. For 18 minutes, that meant sending Marco Asensio on his bike chasing them. It didn’t work.
With 42 long balls (20 of them coming in extra time, accounting for 48% of all long balls in 20% of minutes), this was Spain’s highest figure for this stat at the World Cup. However, their completion rate was down 14% from their average over the last 12 months.
48% of Spain’s long balls against Morocco came in extra-time.
For as much as this Spain team can be criticised for its “tiki taka” and its passing style, they failed to benefit from the core strengths of its players. 966 passes against Morocco, 1,027 against Japan and 1,035 against Costa Rica show that this was a team happy to be in possession. It gave them an average of 74.71% possession at the tournament. That’s almost 10% more possession and close to 200 passes more than the next highest average for any other team, in both cases Argentina.
However, not enough were creating danger. Only one of every 242 Spain passes were deemed to be key passes, or passes which generate a chance, putting them below fellow-eliminated sides like Germany and the United States. For comparison, France average one every 86 passes, England create one key pass every 123 passes, and Argentina have one every 157.
What is even more concerning is how little Spain’s passes progressed them further up the field. Only 8.4% of passes gained them territory. Argentina progress with more than 11% of their passes, while England do so with 13% and France with 12.1%. This was possession for possession’s sake.
Having so much possession without creating a threat takes us back to Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. There was no change of approach, and even Luis Enrique failed to diverge to a more direct style as we have seen him do in the past.
“The coach doesn’t ask us to play it out from the back, he asks us to go more direct and to attack a lot,” Rodri said in a press conference before facing Morocco. You have to wonder quite how much his players listened to him.
Beyond the style, the question is: did Spain have the substance to make it work? The brutal truth of the matter is that this Spain squad was not good enough when it came to the task at hand.
In the front third, Ferran Torres had started only seven games this season before the World Cup. That same figure was only five each for Pablo Sarabia and Ansu Fati, three for Marcos Asensio. Spain have lacked a star in a system which Luis Enrique has looked to build around the team, but when the going got tough, they were left crying to for a moment of individual inspiration and they couldn’t find it.
There will be critics who point to the fact that Luis Enrique could have turned to options like Borja Iglesias or Iago Aspas, more experienced players with regular game time (and goals) under their belts this season. It’s the strongest criticism that Luis Enrique will face in the biopsy of this World Cup campaign.
That meant that Spain were left with no plan B. With only one number nine in his squad, and Morata far from the most robust at that, it meant that his attack was often limited and one dimensional with no focal point to revolve around in attack.
It became too easy for low blocks to cancel out the technical ability of the Spanish forwards by simply denying them space in the final third and inviting them to mull over possession. Spain averaged 27.12 passes per defensive action from their rivals to interrupt them, while no other nation averages even above 19. They fell into the trap.
Did Luis Enrique get it that wrong?
This is the biggest question after all. Spain can only move on if they can identify where they went wrong in Qatar. The first character to take the blame will be Luis Enrique, but is that a fair assumption? The answer may not be as clear-cut as it first seems.
For starters, he didn’t make the stylistic changes that could have been expected. When he took over at Barcelona, he encountered a side who had been abandoned of any style at all under Tata Martino. He moved the team away from the philosophy of Pep Guardiola and Tito Villanova to a more pragmatic approach and it worked as an evolution of FC Barcelona.
With Spain, it hasn’t panned out as well. Coming in, initially, to replace Julen Lopetegui, the transition was similar, though more direct. Four years on from that defeat to Russia, the loss to Morocco could have been a replica. While his plan A is a clear alteration from the now Wolves coach and his tactics with Spain, the lack of a substantial plan B cost Spain dearly again.
Yet, despite the seeming contrast with the previous point, the Spain coach, as in his character, gambled. He could have lined up with Dani Carvajal at right-back and Álvaro Morata as the number nine against Morocco and played the XI that everyone was expecting of him. It might have worked, it most likely wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Luis Enrique left Qatar like a poker player who had spent a night in Las Vegas playing blackjack.
His gambles were mixed, and some paid off and others didn’t. In the end, Luis Enrique left Qatar like a poker player who had spent a night in Las Vegas playing blackjack. The bravery, the guile, the vision were all there, but it didn’t quite add up.
A look across this Spain squad shows that this team will be much better and stronger in four years’ time than it is today. At the start of the tournament, its two best players were touted as Pedri and Gavi, two players who were teenagers when the first ball was kicked in Qatar. 12 of the current 26 men in the squad will be 28 years of age or younger by the next World Cup in four years’ time, while arguably the only core player to move on from his peak to beyond it by 2026 will be 28-year-old Aymeric Laporte.
The bigger issue is that Luis Enrique’s patience may not last this long. He is, without a doubt, the biggest name currently involved in international football, and has been back in the hot seat for a remarkable spell which has involved a European Championship and a World Cup in the space of 18 months.
Big clubs will once again come knocking. Atlético Madrid are just one of those to have been linked with interest in his services, while the likes of Juventus, Manchester United and Chelsea have all seen his name linked to them in speculation. With no major tournament on the horizon for another 18 months, Luis Enrique might feel that the time is right to return to the day-to-day nature of club management.
What next for Spain?
The big question. Luis Enrique refused to be drawn on his immediate future, beyond recognising that he would talk to the RFEF and president Luis Rubiales in the next week or so, but his non-committal answer was taken almost as if it were confirmation of an incoming resignation. That means that rumours have already begun of a potential replacement.
In Spanish football circles, Marcelino’s name has been linked with the role for some time. He has rebuffed interest from clubs who have circled with one eye on the national team job, and would seem to be the leading candidate.
He left Athletic Club in the summer and has not returned to the game since, despite several approaches. His name is often one of the first to be linked with any Spanish side, and his success in cup competitions with Athletic, Valencia and Villarreal in recent years has seen him suggested as a strong candidate for Spain.
His conservative, rugged, brand of football is quite the switch from Luis Enrique. Marcelino is used to being the underdog, but how he would adapt to having players like Pedri or Gavi in his side could be intriguing.
Marcelino’s conservative, rugged, brand of football is quite the switch from Luis Enrique.
With that in mind, and sticking to a more similar philosophy, Roberto Martínez is another obvious candidate. Well-versed in the international scene, he has already announced his departure from the Belgian national team with a dressing room divided that they ended up on six different flights leaving Doha.
His stock is high in Spain, despite that, and he is generally well respected. The last time he plied his trade in Spain was in Tercera División with Balaguer in 1995, but his success with minnows in England caught the eye and his work as a pundit for DAZN for high-profile fixtures like the Copa del Rey final have kept him in the public’s good books.
The third credible candidate would be Luis de la Fuente. The current under 21s coach led many of this current squad as they travelled to Tokyo for the Olympics in 2021, picking up a silver medal in the process. Having worked his way up through the federation, winning European Championships with the under 19s and under 21s, he could be the easy in-house appointment in the form of Robert Moreno (yes, that did really happen).
Another name linked has been Ernesto Valverde, the current Athletic Club coach. However, the timing for that appointment seems to be what could ruin any potential move, coming only six months after his return to Bilbao.
The issue for Luis Rubiales, a man under pressure in his own role as President of the RFEF, is that any one of those candidates is a downgrade from Luis Enrique. He has backed his man strongly and will likely do so until his final day in the role. How he finds a replacement will be a real challenge, and one which could define the future of Spanish football.