Spanish side could change the whole nation’s mentality

I have recently been reading a superb book on Spanish football called ‘Morbo’. The writer Phil Ball illustrates superbly the connection between politics and football in the country. His experience comes from living in San Sebastian, home to Real Sociedad.

Divide

In this excellent book Phil talks about how the Seleccion (Spanish national side) used to be divided by players being loyal to their particular regions.

The Basques, the Catalans and the Castilians all stuck together. Current Barca manager Pep Guardiola even championed the cause of Catalonia being acknowledged on the international stage.

They played the odd friendly but Guardiola and co. wanted them to play more international games and wanted to represent Catalonia, as a separate country from Spain. Although they currently still play friendly’s, Catalonia failed to achieve their aim. Guardiola did play for Spain but was still proud of his Catalan roots.

Early

The early years of the Spanish national side were dominated by politics and in fighting. The team failed to achieve much because of prejudices between managers, players and representatives of the Spanish FA, although they did win the European Championship in 1964.

Change

Although the country is still very much divided the Spanish national team has found a happy median. This generation of Spanish player doesn’t seem to hold any prejudice against their teammates or managers. Barcelona midfielder Xavi told Skysports that the Spanish squad is currently like a club, the players are that close. Xavi revealed:

“Spain have still not found success in the World Cup but the squad is very concentrated and all the companions are in a compact group. In that sense, Spain appears more like a club than a national team.”

That sort of comment proves that the current Spanish squad are stronger than ever. I can’t imagine anybody saying that they are not going to play alongside somebody who is Basque, Catalan or Castilian.

Quality

In one section of the book he talks about why Spain failed on the big stage, the book having been published in 2003. He puts their lack of achievement partly down to the quality of player produced by the country.

Now a lot has changed in the last seven years. This is a guy who is an expert on Spanish football. He would probably look back on that passage of the book and laugh. The reason for this would be that in the last seven years Spain have produced some of the most talented players in the world.

You only have to look at the current Barcelona team for world-class players; the likes of Xavi and Andres Iniesta are proof of that. The game has made an amazing transformation in the last ten years.

Achievers

As Phil put in the book, Spain were always considered ‘Dark Horses’ for every tournament. However they had some terrible luck and suffered from some really poor officiating in big tournaments. Their own fans always saw them as underachievers and maybe that was the team’s problem, everybody expected them to slip up.

They have shed the image of the underperformers of European football with their European Championship victory in 2008. This victory blew away the sense of underachievement and inferiority that had clouded previous big tournaments and the Spanish national side in general.

Favourites

The Spanish will go into this year’s World Cup as one of the favourites for the trophy. I suspect that a lot of people in Spain won’t like this tag, as every time they go into a tournament with any sort of confidence they seem to blow their chance.

However this Spanish side is arguably the best they have ever had and the tag of favourites shouldn’t stop them going on to become the world’s best side. This side has a unity and spirit that was seemingly missing from previous editions of the Seleccion.

This side could help change the countries whole attitude towards the national side and that could unite a country divided for so long by political and cultural differences.