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Madrid is pushing for Luis Enrique not to renew with Spain

BarcelonaThe summer of 1966 was the year of the World Cup. Real Madrid had just won the sixth European Cup and the Spanish national team was preparing for the World Cup in England. The press of the time began a campaign to condition Spain’s invitation. They said that if Real Madrid was the best European team, the Spanish national team had to be… Real Madrid. And the rest, substitutes.

The relationship between the media in Madrid – and those close to Real Madrid, specifically – and the Spanish national team goes back a long way. There has always been a sense of belonging. To the point that, if the whites do not bring more players than anyone else or the captain is not merengue, it seems that that does not go with them. when the Red achieved the best successes in its history, stringing together two European Cups (2008 and 2012) and a World Cup (2010) with a base of Barça players who practiced the game model that was brought to the Camp Nou, from Madrid they tried diverting the focus towards the coach (a Madridista, Vicente del Bosque) and distorting the narrative to attribute the victories to himself.

The arrival of Luis Enrique in the national team opened Pandora’s box again. The coach, loved by Chamartín until he left the white team in 1996 to sign for Barça, has historically been a perfect target for the Madrid press. The sporting rivalry, added to his character, generally unsympathetic to the media, had turned him into a kind of public enemy number 1. Let him take the reigns of Spain and, above all, start a revolution in the dressing room to eliminate the old guard – among them, the captain Sergio Ramos – and betting on young talents, was a kind of sacrilege that they could not forgive. It did him no good to reach the final of the League of Nations – which he lost with a controversial goal against France – or to reach the semi-finals of the European Cup – where he fell on penalties against Italy –. They saw everything wrong. That Barça was the team with the most players on Qatar’s list – Real Madrid only has one – was another reason to boo him. And the elimination in the round of 16 against Morocco was the icing on the cake.

The day after an unexpected KO, the press published in Madrid has been an almost unanimous cry against Luis Enrique. His contract ends right after this World Cup and he will have to sit down with the president of the Federation, Luis Rubiales, to negotiate a new agreement. “Right now I don’t care very much. I want to go home, be with my family, hug my dogs… Let’s let some time pass and next week we’ll talk about it,” he answered the microphones of La1 minutes after the fateful shooting of penalties against the Moroccans. “It’s a personal issue. It depends on whether he has the strength and courage to continue what he has started”, they point out from his environment, where they say they don’t really know if the coach’s intention is to continue or not at the head of the selection.

Contrary to what happened years ago, in which the national teams were a kind of elephant graveyard where the coaches, tired of day-to-day work with the teams, would exhaust the last years as active technicians, today the state teams are more professionalized and proactive For Luis Enrique, the call from Spain was a blessing. He had taken some time off after leaving the Barça bench in 2017 because he “couldn’t take it anymore” and was facing a challenge that allowed him to do two things: to continue being linked to football and to have free time for his leisure, especially cycling and endurance races.

When he left Barça, the coach admitted that his batteries had run out. That it was difficult for him to follow the group, which he already sensed that it needed a revolution that he did not have the courage to face. Things are different in Spain, where he has created his base team, young and with a lot of projection. A united group that has only sinned in this World Cup of two things: the lack of experience in major tournaments and, also, of individuals who resolve matches. But, of course, this is not the coach’s business.

The final decision is also in the hands of Luis Rubiales

Regardless of what Luis Enrique wants to do, there is doubt about what Rubiales will do, who so far has not hesitated to defend the Asturian. It is also true that he had a contract in force. The press in Madrid is doing everything possible to persuade the president to opt for someone else. But Rubiales has also admitted in a small committee that the revolution in Luis Enrique’s dressing room has been an essential cleaning that only someone with character and authority like him could undertake. The president believes in the new generation and would like to continue it. And he is afraid that a new selector will opt for a different profile when making calls.

Luis Enrique took the helm after the 2018 World Cup and had to step down temporarily, for half a year, due to the unfortunate death of his daughter Xana, in the fall of 2019. He returned stronger than ever, for the Eurocopa last summer – after a conflict with what had been his second, Robert Moreno -. He took the criticism he continued to receive much more left handed and even opened a Twitch channel to broadcast his message without interference. On Monday, despite the elimination, his face showed an enviable serenity because he gave a lot of value to everything he had built, even if the sports results did not accompany him. If he really wants to continue, it seems unlikely that the federation will be able to put many obstacles in his way.

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