Twelve years may be a long time by its basic definition, but in international football? Try telling England fans that constitutes a long wait.
For Spain, there would be no prolonged drought, no pining for an unrepeatable generation, and no arduous, decades-long reinvention of both style and type of footballers.
Though the likes of Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta might never come along again, nobody was spending much time looking to the sky with their palms out.
Few would argue that Luis de la Fuente’s team were anything but Euro 2024’s best side. They were not merely winners who outlasted the rest. The eye test told us they were great, and the numbers confirmed it: seven games, seven wins, 15 goals scored, four goals conceded. Of the 715 minutes of football they played across the tournament, very few of which were against lower-ranked nations, they were behind for just over 33 of them.
Spain were rarely hit, never mind knocked down.
La Roja played a typically technical game in Germany, but it was their young, fleet-footed wide players – Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams – who were the difference makers. Perhaps in the future, it will be precisely those two figures who stand as the reference points of Euro 2024 and that Spain team, the differentiators who hang on to tell the story of the tournament and what it was that made Spain great, as well as different.
Yamal was selected as UEFA’s Young Player of the Tournament, while both players would later be immortalised in the Best XI.
Aged 17 and 21 at the start of the Euros, Yamal and Williams were a rare duo given their context. They were young, they played a lot, they produced a lot, and they did so in an international side who had not only won a major tournament, but dominated it in the process. Indeed, it was they who opened the door in the final against England, with Williams finishing off a jinking run and pass from Yamal to set Spain on their way.
It was a symbolic scene, especially with a nod to the nation’s future. The Spanish national team had worked their way back to major tournament success, but this time with two youngsters as their catalysts. To compare that to previous World Cup and Euros success, Yamal and Williams alone (911) almost accounted for the total minutes played by Spaniards aged 21 or younger across Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 combined (984).