Spain Coach De La Fuente Confident in Young Stars for World Cup
Spain coach Luis de la Fuente insists he will head to the World Cup with his attacking jewels intact, even as an unforgiving season leaves his squad taped together at the seams.
Lamine Yamal, the 18-year-old phenomenon who has lit up Barcelona’s right flank and rapidly become a symbol of Spain’s new era, has not kicked a ball since suffering a hamstring injury in late April. His club have already ruled him out for the rest of the domestic campaign, a jarring halt to his breakout year.
Yet De la Fuente is not blinking.
“I think that all the players who have been mentioned will be fit and available for the start of the World Cup and I believe for the first match,” he told journalists, projecting calm in a week when medical bulletins have dominated Spanish headlines.
Yamal is not alone in the treatment room. Athletic Bilbao’s Williams picked up a muscle injury on Sunday, a fresh worry for a side that leans heavily on his pace and direct running. Arsenal midfielder Mikel Merino, a key figure in the engine room, is still recovering after breaking his right foot three months ago.
On paper, that is the spine of a team. On the pitch, for now, it is a list of absentees.
De la Fuente, though, refuses to treat it as a crisis. If there is a delay, he argued, it will be short-lived.
“If it's not for the first match, it would be for the second or third, and it doesn't cause any major setbacks,” the Spain coach said, before acknowledging the toll of a relentless calendar. It has been, he admitted, “a very tough year in terms of injuries.”
He did not sugar-coat the strain on players pushed to the limit by club and country.
“The world of injuries, which is the tragedy of sport, is what truly keeps us under a lot of pressure, especially in this critical phase because injuries that occur from now on, any minor muscular injury, are really difficult to recover from,” he added.
That is the tightrope Spain now walk: managing risk without dulling their edge, protecting stars without losing rhythm.
De la Fuente confirmed he will take the full allocation of 26 players to the World Cup. Around that core, he plans a wider circle of options, with additional players drafted in for a friendly against Iraq on June 4. That game will act as both audition and insurance policy, a final look at those on the fringes and a chance to sharpen those returning from the physio’s room.
There is little time to ease into the tournament. Spain open their World Cup campaign against Cape Verde on June 15 in Atlanta, a fixture that looks straightforward on reputation but arrives with all the tension of a first step on a long road. Uruguay and Saudi Arabia complete a group that offers no room for complacency, especially if key names are still playing catch-up with fitness.
For now, De la Fuente is betting on recovery, on modern medicine, and on the resilience of his stars. The injuries are real, the schedule brutal. The question is simple: when Spain walk out in Atlanta, will his young leaders be ready to carry a nation’s hopes, or still racing the clock?
