“I have been in the national team for almost 10 years and I have never experienced an environment like this. ” Jordi Alba after falling to Italy, he ratified it Busquets and it was a reflection that appeared in the words of all the players who spoke after the game.
Upon entering the locker room there was row by Luis Enrique. Because the coach didn’t want to see tears. It was pride that he wanted his players to feel and that they were able to contain that cry that was disconsolate like that of Pedri. That is why he asked for music in defeat and provoked that image of an ovation in the booth.
It is one more gesture in the 40 days of a concentration that has built something unique. “Only in the subsidiary of Barcelona I saw something like that, and, of course, it was a subsidiary, “said the coach before starting the Euro, when the positives of Busquets and Diego Llorente they altered everything.
The tests have been many and hard: the attacks on Morata, the first two games, the threat of falling in the first phase … All that was uniting the group. Until the end. And the end did not come until they separated in Madrid. Because the whole team returned to Spain. All with the national team’s clothes, which has not always been the case. Other final phases ended with disbands and costumes that did not leave the Federation too well.
Azpilicueta: “We want more, we have a lot of ambition and we are going for Italy”
The Premier players were able to stay in England. They did not want. Azpilicueta He was a few miles from home, with his wife and daughters on the steps of Wembley. But he wanted to fly to Madrid with his companions, share the bus to Luton airport and then the flight to digest what he suffered as a group. From the Federation, with Luis rubiales At the head, it was made clear to him that he could stay in London, that it was normal and that they would send him home everything he had in Las Rozas. There was nothing to do. The Navarrese wanted to fly with his team, his people, that human group in which he has found what had been denied him in the World Cups in Brazil and Russia and the Euro 2016. Few have enjoyed and suffered this Euro like he did.
Landed in Madrid with the sun already waking up, Azpilicueta said goodbye to his companions. Some were already returning home from Barajas. The Navarrese did not leave the airport. The next flight awaited him, bound for the place he had just arrived from: London. Your things from Las Rozas they will arrive. And soon I will fly back to Spain, at Balearics. Because for the government of London the Spanish islands require much less paperwork than if you arrive from the peninsula. Ah rest Azipilicueta after sticking my head back into the selection. This time to do something great. And he wants more.