The headline in Monday’s Marca summed up the delirious pleasure that had greeted Spain’s Euro 2024 triumph the night time earlier than, a triumph that introduced the nation a file fourth males’s European Championship title. “¡¡¡Somos los reyes de Europa!!!” bellowed the sports activities paper – “We’re the Kings of Europe!!!”
As many commentators famous, Luis de la Fuente’s group had lastly, and unequivocally, discovered the shape that had propelled their illustrious predecessors to victory. “La Roja has rediscovered the thread of the play that led it to its golden years,” stated David Álvarez in El País.
“And never solely that: after rediscovering the thread, it has continued to construct on it, with the identical beautiful expertise, with a torrent of power, and with a formidable religion that may endure any second of doubt or setback. It really works, it resists and it kills – even when it loses its lighthouse, Rodri – the participant of the match, who retired injured after solely 45 minutes. And all this has been topped by the dizzying tempo revealed in Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams, who’re set, frictionlessly, inside the previous equipment of management.”
In El Mundo, Abraham P Romero stated – as did others – that England had been comprehensively outplayed. “Everlasting glory” was Spain’s reward, whereas England’s was one more bitter dollop of “everlasting tragedy”. The final 45 minutes, stated Romero, had revealed the gulf between the perimeters.
“The beginning of the second half was a Shakespearean tragedy,” he wrote. “England, incapable of something, yielded earlier than a superior Spain and just some unwise Spanish choices averted a hammering. The harm suffered by Spain’s helmsman, Rodri, made little distinction: the Premier stars discovered themselves kneeling earlier than a Spanish era that’s afraid of nothing.”
José Samano was equally exultant in El Periódico, contrasting Spain’s “hymn to soccer” with a “airtight” England. “Spain kicked the soccer into its inventor’s face and ascended to the Euro throne for the fourth time – a novel feat,” he stated.
“Nobody had any want to indicate off as a result of no rival possessed better allure than Luis de la Fuente’s group. By no means was there a extra goalscoring champion, nor a winner with seven consecutive victories – 4 of them towards world champions.”
ABC’s José Carlos Carabias was amongst those that paid tribute to “a group that represents the plural, various and built-in Spain of 2024” – one that includes younger gamers, corresponding to Lamine Yamal and Williams, who had been born in Spain to oldsters from overseas.
“The Spanish group mixes a cocktail of footballers from completely different backgrounds and leagues that provide a snapshot of the world in our time: households that transfer from place to put, immigrants looking for a future with a bit prosperity, exchanges of nationality on a spinning planet and ID playing cards that shouldn’t discriminate towards anybody’s origin,” he wrote.
A lot of the eye fell on Lamine Yamal – the youngest participant to take part, and rating, in a males’s Euros, and on Williams. Marco Schwartz, writing in elDiario.es, recognised the representational weight the 2 gamers have discovered themselves carrying due to their heritage and due to the time and society through which they dwell.
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“We’d all like Nico and Lamine to solely, and solely, symbolise the magic of soccer,” he stated. “And that’s what would occur in a traditional world. But it surely has turned out to be inevitable that in turbulent occasions which can be charged with racism and xenophobia, the 2 younger sportsmen have acquired a political significance they didn’t search.
“The pair who know very effectively what’s at stake away from the soccer discipline, have accepted their new standing with ease and even delight – simply as [Kylian] Mbappé accepted it when he requested French folks to not vote for Marine Le Pen.”
La Vanguardia’s Luis Buxeres additionally positioned the 2 on the very centre of Spain’s victory. “The Spain that gained in Berlin was the Spain of Lamine Yamal and of Nico Williams, the Spain of smiles, the Spain of household, the invincible Spain,” he wrote.
There then adopted a bit gloating – full with a really pointed reference to the good, and apparently unforgotten, showdown of 1588. “England should discover a new Sir Francis Drake to sink the Spanish fleet, now that Spain – which has gained the Nations League and the Euros within the area of only a yr – threatens to dominate the seas of worldwide soccer simply as Phillip II’s fleet dominated the waves 5 centuries in the past,” stated Buxeres.
“Fifty-eight years have now handed since England final seized some booty, and it should go on ready to benefit from the sport it so lovingly invented.”
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