England are no match for the Spanish DNA

0Rodri lifts Spain’s second World Cup trophy, the nation’s fifth major tournament triumph this century – Getty Images/Franck FifeThe late Luis Aragonés, the manager of Spain’s first modern trophy-winning side in 2008, was not a man of many words – and at least a few of them landed him in trouble. Yet he had a simple philosophy that he espoused leading up to that European Championship final in Vienna 18 years ago when Fernando Torres’ goal finally turned Spain into a country that could win.

For the first time on the biggest stage Aragonés put faith in the new generation of possession-nurturing, space-finding, pass-accumulating players whose style – almost two decades on – is unmistakably Spanish. Aragonés did so before Pep Guardiola had made that kind of football a globally recognisable brand. Curmudgeonly, indelicate, a man whose coaching career had begun the year before General Franco’s death, Aragonés, aged 69 in 2008, took that leap.

What has been done since 2008 has been little short of remarkable. Guardiola has led Spanish football’s global transformation of the way football is played, and Spain have won two European Championships and two World Cups, including this summer. They are already in the second of two distinct golden periods in the last 20 years. A nation that has only the sixth-biggest economy in Europe, which has a good sporting pedigree – if not a great one – has come to dominate and shape the biggest game on earth. Luis de la Fuente’s team arrive at Wembley on Saturday as representatives of the greatest football nation of the 21st century.

In the meantime, England – and English football – which has been measuring itself against Spain since the latter’s success began, awaits its own shift in fortune. Thomas Tuchel believes it is not “in the DNA” of English players to keep the ball, and Anthony Gordon, only the third Englishman to play for Barcelona’s first team, says that may never change.

“They’re definitely built different,” Gordon said this week of Spanish footballers in general. “I even look at some of the decisions they take on the ball and think, ‘I’m not sure how you’ve seen that.’”

Few are better placed to analyse the Spanish and English games of the last two decades than Pako Ayestarán. The 63-year-old, yet another Basque-born coach, was Rafael Benítez’s assistant at Valencia and Liverpool, winning the Champions League, the Uefa Cup and two La Liga titles among many other trophies. Having taken up seven first-team manager positions himself, he was most recently Unai Emery’s assistant at Aston Villa, his last game being the Europa League triumph in Istanbul.

Speaking to Telegraph Sport, Ayestarán reminds that Spain before 2008 were very different. “The Spain team was defined by the Spanish fiery character and intensity, and it was not successful at all. We went through a desert when it came to trophies for 44 years [after the 1964 European Championship triumph].”

What happened leading up to 2008 was, he says, “a paradigm shift”, which started with Johan Cruyff’s six years as Barcelona’s first-team coach up to 1994. Even so, the success that has flowed from that takes some explaining.

Not only are Spain’s men the reigning world champions, so too are Spain’s women. Spain men’s Under-19s are the European champions, and they have won more titles at that age group – 13 – than any other. Spain have won more men’s Under-17s European titles than any other – nine – and only Italy can match their five Under-21 titles. Of those 13 Under-19 titles, 10 have come in the 21st century. Spain have also been finalists on a further two occasions in the last 26 years. Spain also score the most highly in 21st-century titles in the Under-21s and Under-17s.

When Guardiola took his first pre-season as Barcelona manager in that European Championship-winning summer of 2008, the shift that had begun to take place when he was a player, Ayestarán says, had percolated into the academies of Spanish clubs. “Academies already had a new methodology: what was important on and off the ball, the timing of runs and through this method we grew players like Xavi, Iniesta, Fàbregas, David Silva. But [before] it was down to Aragonés. He was brave enough to play with these kinds of players and then later came Busquets, Pedri.”

Ayestarán was at Valencia when Silva emerged as a slightly built attacking player, who even then was a puzzle to some of the coaches. “I was there with Rafa and Silva was 18,” Ayestarán says. “One of the coaches said to us, ‘We have to make David stronger.’ I said: ‘He doesn’t need to be any stronger, he is so good at finding the pockets of space that by the time they press him he has already moved the ball on.’”

After Aragonés’ 2008 triumph, the explosion of Guardiola-era Barcelona for the next four years turbo-charged the change. There was the 2010 World Cup triumph and another European triumph two years later. While those two trophies were overseen by Vicente Del Bosque, it was Guardiola who ushered in a game-changing epoch for the world. He has been the great exporter of a certain style, and its most effective apostle.

“Because Pep was so successful in four years, every coach and every club and academy thought it was the right way,” Ayestarán says. “That set the methodology. I would go to watch training at other clubs like Inter Milan and Bayern Munich when I had the time but they were doing what we did in Spain. It was a paradigm shift. There were Spanish players at the best clubs in Europe where in the past there had not been.”

From that 2008 cohort, Fàbregas and Xavi are now among the Spanish coaches that dominate European football. Research by Twenty-First Group, specialists in sports intelligence, says that Spanish coaches occupy more than 14 per cent of the head coach or manager roles at what are rated as the 1,000 leading clubs in the world. The nearest competitor is Portugal at less than six per cent.

The “England DNA” document launched by the Football Association in 2014 was largely based on the principles of the successful Spain team of that era. That went hand-in-hand with the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan revolution, created to develop better players after England’s dud 2010 World Cup campaign. Many of the clubs that spent millions of pounds transforming their academies recruited Spanish academy directors, such as Pep Segura at Liverpool and Rodolfo Borrell at Manchester City.

Ayestarán says that English players are used to playing the game at a greater speed which makes it harder when the moment requires a slower tempo. “Look at [Elliot] Anderson’s performance against [Manchester] United when City had just 10 men,” he says. “What a game he had. In a different way you [English] can get success. England had to find their own way because the players come through the ranks in this way of playing.”

The difference, as he sees it in junior football, is that in Spain technique is developed alongside tactical ideas. “From a young age in Spain, they are taught to think about the next pass and the next position.”

Certainly it feels like the Spanish revolution has been the triumph of an idea rather than an organised revolution. The Spanish football federation, the RFEF, has some very good coaches, including De la Fuente, but for a time during the Luis Rubiales scandal, it was a national embarrassment. Javier Tebas, the La Liga president, is at war with Real Madrid, with more skirmishes this week. If the RFEF has a grand plan for Spanish football it does not seem to have said much about it. Perhaps the whole thing works just as well without one.

If there was a weakness, Ayestarán says, it was the tendency of Spain not to produce players who wanted to dribble past an opponent, although the emergence of Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams has changed that. There was a time, Ayestarán says, when “every player wanted to control and pass – and you were not allowed to take on opponents”.

English players, Ayestarán says, play at the highest competitive level every week. He watched Villa’s Under-21s game against their Real Sociedad counterparts earlier this month. The Basque side took the lead, but by the end of the first half that competitive edge had seen the English players back in the game and by the end Villa won 5-1. “This competitive edge can be a benefit for England,” he says. “In the last four years England has grown as a team.” As ever though, they seem to be two steps behind a Spanish nation that keeps evolving quicker than any other.

Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.