An unflappable guiding force

Vicente del Bosque believes his Spanish side is still good enough to go the distance in Brazil

Of all the men in the room when the World Cup draw was conducted a couple of weeks ago, Vicente del Bosque of Spain was the one with something to lose.

He would be a fantastic poker player, this lugubrious veteran coach. He suppressed a wry smile when it was revealed that his team, the defending champion, would kick off the 2014 tournament against the same opponent, the Netherlands, it beat through Andrés Iniesta’s goal in extra time in Johannesburg for the title four years ago.

“I told friends this morning that we would get Holland,” he said. “Getting Chile as well makes it a rather complicated group.”

Complicated. You do not hear del Bosque mention a Group of Death. His Dutch adversary, Louis van Gaal, called this “the worst of the groups,” slightly less dramatic than Jurgen Klinsmann’s lament that the United States had been drawn into “the worst of the worst.”

Del Bosque’s rhetoric has always been understated. He said nothing quotable, nothing remotely recriminatory, when the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, fired him a decade ago — claiming that even though the team had won La Liga, del Bosque looked worn out and was “not a coach for the future.”

And now, 5-1/2 years after he took over the Spanish team after it won Euro 2008 — and with just eight losses in 84 games as the national coach — del Bosque is seeking an unprecedented achievement of winning back-to-back World Cups, together with back-to-back Euro championships.

Ten coaches have passed through Real Madrid since tired old del Bosque was dismissed. Not one has bettered his record. He turns 63 this month, but he has just extended his contract with the national team through 2016.

“Football is my passion, my vice,” he said in Rio de Janeiro last June. “I have had marvelous moments as a player in great teams, and right now, I am coaching a team which is in one of its best-ever phases. So I am enjoying it, even if I am not showing it that obviously.”

He was speaking then of the team that looked weary and was overrun, 3-0, by Brazil in the Confederations Cup, the rehearsal for 2014. The critics were saying then, and are repeating now, that Spain and its tiki-taka keep-ball style has run its course.

The naysayers contend that the core of the team — Xavi Hernández and Xabi Alonso and Iniesta in midfield, Sergio Ramos and Carles Puyol, even Gerard Piqué at the back — has run so many miles for club and country, won so many cups, that 2014, in the heat and humidity and with the vast distances to cover in Brazil, will prove a tournament too far.

Del Bosque, however, knows these players better than anyone else. He didn’t buy into the ageist argument of his president at Madrid, and he looks now at Xavi (130 caps and still running), Alonso (109 caps and just back, refreshed after a long injury) and Puyol (100 caps and something to prove about fitness). Yes, age creeps up on them. Yes, there is sometimes a limit on how many times a champion can run through the wall of effort in a month-long, sapping tournament. But like life itself, sports is a balance between youth and experience. If players like these think they have another World Cup in them, why would a coach discard the talents and the know-how that have delivered?When del Bosque says the team is in “one of its best-ever phases,” he is surely understating the players once again. But even now, six months from the event, the coach knows something else.

The records at youth international tournaments show that the production line of Spanish talents, and the methods nurturing those talents, has far from run dry. Another estimable coach heading for the World Cup, Italy’s Cesare Prandelli, said, “We all will need 23 athletes in these temperatures.”

Spain has talents still coming through the system to make the squad competitive. Del Bosque trusts the senior players as long as their form and fitness hold out. He also has emerging players, like Isco, the 21-year-old Real Madrid prospect. And with Sergio Busquets, Cesc Fàbregas, Iniesta and David Silva experienced beyond their years, the cards he holds could still be a winning hand.

That it has a difficult start suits Spain.

“It’s good for the mentality,” del Bosque said. “When you play lesser teams, there is a problem with concentration.”

The Spanish federation has tested that concentration to the limits. It has taken the world trophy to the far corners of the globe, reaping profit wherever it goes, and in the process adding to the workload on senior players. One of the eight defeats, for example, came last month in Johannesburg, where Spain, returning to the scene of its greatest triumph, lost, 1-0, to South Africa.

Del Bosque made 10 changes from the team that won, 2-1, in Equatorial Guinea three days before. For the coach and for the players, this was an exhibition game during a week when those players were expected to be at full speed for their clubs by the weekend.

Five months since the Confederations Cup loss to Brazil in the Maracanã, and six months before the World Cup, del Bosque has suggested that the nations may meet again in the 2014 final.

For that to happen, Spain probably has to win its group to avoid running into Brazil in the first knockout round. And in the event of Spain and Brazil meeting again, del Bosque is lining up a striker that he did not have a year ago. 

Diego Costa, born in Brazil but scoring in La Liga for Atlético Madrid, qualified for Spanish citizenship recently, and opted to represent Spain rather than Brazil at the national level.If del Bosque has lacked one piece for his jigsaw, it has been a decisive finisher, like Costa.