Security forces, who also deployed mounted officers and dogs, dragged away at least three people in the most serious trouble of the World Cup. One policeman fell off his horse in the disturbances.
Organisers later blamed the trouble on hundreds of ticketless fans, who they said had tried to force their way into Al Rayyan’s Education City stadium. However others who were caught in the melee insisted they had legitimate tickets – and feared they could have got seriously hurt.
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In one clip on social media a woman wearing Spanish colours but speaking with an English accent warned police there was a baby in the crowd. “They’re going to get trampled, there’s too many people,” she said.
Other footage showed police in riot gear pushing and shoving fans – crushing them up against a fence – as well as fights breaking out.
Morocco will play Portugal in the quarter-finals – and could play England in the semi-finals next week if both teams get through.
Sources close to the organisers told the Guardian that they had deployed extra security measures – which included soft ticket checks and a far larger police presence – because they had expected Morocco fans without tickets to try to get in.
Long before kick-off, multiple checkpoints were set up outside the metro station, with fans asked to show their tickets at each stage. With 20 minutes remaining, however, police blocked the main entrance amid fears that fans without tickets were trying to barge through.
Some people showed their phones and what appeared to be their passports but were turned away. It was unclear how many people outside the stadium had tickets and how many did not.
The atmosphere outside the stadium did eventually calm down with groups of fans watching the game on mobile phones after shuffling away from the perimeter gate. Despite a large number of empty seats before kick‑off it was later announced as a sell-out with a full capacity of 44,667.
This is not the first time there has been issues involving Morocco’s fans at this World Cup. There was also pushing before the team’s last group match against Canada, with some fans also trying to climb a fence.
A statement from Qatari organisers said: “A number of unticketed supporters gathered outside the Education City Stadium ahead of the Morocco v Spain match in an attempt to gain access to the stadium. ‘Soft’ ticket checks had been established some distance from the stadium perimeter to prevent groups crowding stadium access points.
Despite this, a small group of fans were able to approach the stadium fence and were quickly dispersed by tournament security forces on the ground, with no injuries or further issues reported.
“Fans were redirected to the local free fan zone where the match was being aired. Ensuring the safety and security of every fan is of paramount importance and all decisions taken are directed towards this aim.”
A few minutes after Yassine Bounou’s penalty shootout heroics, Morocco’s players knelt in unison to pray before a baying bank of supporters drumming furiously to the sweet sound of victory against Spain. It was a powerful sight that will touch more than the tens of thousands of Moroccans here.
After more than 130 minutes of gripping drama and relentless noise, Morocco are the lone Arab nation and last African team standing. The Argentinian referee, Fernando Rapallini, needed a megaphone to make himself heard.
Bounou, the Morocco goalkeeper who saved from Carlos Soler and Sergio Busquets and is one of four Morocco players based in Spain, was still getting his breath back after being tossed into the air by his teammates. Bounou – who has “Bono” on his shirt – and the forward Youssef En-Nesyri play in La Liga for Sevilla and the substitute Abdessamad Ezzalzouli, who was raised in Spain from the age of seven, for Osasuna.
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Then it was the turn of the manager, Walid Regragui, to be hoisted aloft by his players. Regragui, who agreed to take charge only in August, kept tapping his head with both hands while on the run to join the party, as if to say: is this really happening? Morocco are only the fourth African team to reach the World Cup quarter-finals and the first since Ghana in 2010.
Before the game Moroccans – with the help of a few Cameroonian, Ghanaian, Senegalese and Tunisian supporters determined to unite for their continent – had turned Souq Waqif into a postcard of Marrakech. The extra 5,000 tickets released by the Moroccan federation on Sunday in an attempt to satisfy demand proved inadequate.
A partisan crowd enjoyed themselves – some spent almost the entire match with their backs to the pitch in favour of creating a din – but outside the stadium some supporters clashed with riot police. Some resorted to huddling around a mobile phone to watch the action. They need not require any sound, for the reality was loud and clear. Those lucky enough to be inside more than got their money’s worth and, in truth, they probably could have been blindfolded and still told you exactly what was happening.
The fourth meeting between these teams was always going to blur loyalties given their geopolitical relationship. Only the strait of Gibraltar, eight miles at its narrowest point, separates the countries and Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish exclaves in north Africa since 1580 and 1497 respectively. It was fitting, then, that Achraf Hakimi, who was born in Madrid, took the decisive spot‑kick, chipping the ball down the middle of goal as Unai Simón dived to his right.
Morocco’s players and substitutes streaked after Hakimi. Hakimi, who plays for Paris Saint‑Germain, a club under Qatari ownership, is something of a cover star in Doha’s downtown, on PSG branding in the Msheireb district. Tears streamed down the cheeks of a Morocco supporter, his face-paint running off him.
From the moment a montage of Spain’s passage to the last 16 appeared on the big screens, the tone was set. When the team was read aloud, the Morocco supporters jeered every name. During the Moroccan national anthem Hakimi closed his eyes as if dreaming. As soon as Spain played the ball back to Aymeric Laporte at kick-off, a familiar theme was established. The Morocco supporters shrilled, squealed and whistled for as long as Spain had possession. And boy did they have some possession. Spain completed almost four times as many passes as Morocco. Laporte and Rodri had twice the number of touches of any Morocco player. Morocco’s fans made just about any noise they could in an attempt to destabilise Spain and it seemed to work. Marco Asensio registered Spain’s first shot after almost 26 minutes, their only attempt in the first half.
Spain seemingly planned on causing death by a thousand passes – 1,050 if we are being precise – but Morocco, sitting deep, often with 11 men behind the ball, stuck to the task and their defending was befitting of their nickname: the Atlas Lions. Sofyan Amrabat was everywhere and Sofiane Boufal bright before being replaced.
At times their desire got the better of them, though. Yahia Attiyat Allah accidentally tripped Ezzalzouli in his desperation to steal the ball, but moments later the pair teamed up to block Marcos Llorente’s cross. Morocco’s captain, Romain Saïss, pulled a hamstring in extra‑time but returned to the field partially mummified, his left leg taped up by medical staff. They then survived the substitute Pablo Sarabia’s volley kissing a post deep into three minutes of stoppage time at the end of extra-time.
The scenes were joyous. The final stop on Morocco’s victory lap was to celebrate before their biggest group of supporters, behind their dugout.
It was there where their close relatives, who have been permitted to stay at their plush Doha base, rejoiced. For Morocco, this is a family affair – extended family affair, perhaps, given how many people across the world were backing them here. Among the guests at their West Bay hotel are the midfielder Abdelhamid Sabiri’s parents and Regragui’s mother, Fatima, who until now had never left Paris, let alone France, to follow her son. She will not forget this trip in a hurry.
And so, in the end, it was down to him. After two tense, exhausting hours, and seven agonising minutes on the edge, Achraf Hakimi stood on the spot, the whole world watching. Born in Madrid, his was the sixth penalty in the shootout, the chance to send Morocco through to the quarter-finals of the World Cup for the first time in their history – and eliminate the country where he grew up. Pressure, what pressure? Hakimi barely broke into a run, instead virtually walking to the ball, and gently dinking it into the net.
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Standing there, he shuffled from side to side and smiled. In front of him, Morocco’s fans went wild. Behind him, his teammates were sprinting straight at him. Together they ran towards the corner, where Bono, their goalkeeper and their hero, was waiting, arms wide. And then they fell to fell to the floor and prayed. History had been made, and how they had fought for it. An upset in the knockouts. Spain are out; Africa’s last remaining team are through.
Six and half hours have passed at this World Cup, and still not one opponent has beaten Bono. Morocco have conceded a single goal at this competition, and they scored that one themselves. Even when it went to penalties, there was no way past him, somehow. He saved two of them – from the Spain captain Sergio Busquets and from Valencia midfielder Carlos Soler – having already watched the first hit the post. It had been taken by Pablo Sarabia, who was now in tears.
How could he not be? He had been sent on with just two minutes to go precisely to take the penalty, to get Spain off to a good start but had not succeeded. Not then, and not before either. It was the second time he had hit the post in barely two minutes. If he came on with a mission, he had also been handed a moment. Suddenly appearing a yard from goal, taking the ball on the bounce, he had struck the post in the 123rd minute; which might have been part of the reason why he now did it again, the weight of responsibility just too much. Crikey, this was cruel.
Not that Morocco cared, and they will feel they deserved it. This place, which was very much their place, erupted. A tense, fascinating game had seen them not just resist Spain but have chances of their own, and now they had one that they would not allow to slip through their fingers. Abdelhamid Sabiri had scored, Sarabia had missed and it began. While Badr Benoun did not score from the spot, Unai Simon diving to save a weak effort, Hakim Ziyech did. And now Hakimi had as well, the coolest man in the whole of Qatar.
The knockout game between Spain and Morocco will bring millions of fans on both sides of the strait of Gibraltar together around screens in bars and living rooms to see which country will keep alive its dream of World Cup glory.
Nowhere will loyalties likely be more blurred than in Spain’s tiny north African territory of Ceuta where identities, both national and religious, often mix in unpredictable ways that confound the easy categories of sports fandom.
Sulaika Hosain, a 26-year-old Ceuta native, feels “100% Spanish” yet when the game kicks off on Tuesday in Qatar, her sympathies will tilt towards Morocco, the land of her grandfather.
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“I am a Spaniard and want Spain to win, but I am rooting for Morocco … When Morocco plays, something moves inside me,” she said at the indoor playground where she works. “Let them win something, so people can say: ‘Look, Morocco is not just a poor place.”
Some World Cup games become supercharged with layers of political symbolism, such as the match between USA and Iran last week. Spain and Morocco are far from geopolitical rivals, but their long and complex relationship will no doubt be part of the backdrop to the game in Al Rayyan.
Ceuta has been in Spanish possession since 1580. Its mixed population of Christians and Muslims, Spanish and Moroccan residents and day workers, live in relative harmony behind a border fence that many desperate migrants from across Africa see as their last barrier to a better life.
However, the city of 85,000 recently became the flashpoint of the biggest diplomatic crisis in recent memory between Madrid and Rabat. In May 2021, the Moroccan government dropped its border controls and let thousands of young migrants from Morocco and sub-Saharan countries pour into Ceuta, which Morocco does not officially recognise as Spanish territory.
A bar worker in Ceuta waves a Spain flag ahead of the World Cup last-16 match against Morocco. Photograph: Antonio Sempere/AP
The move was interpreted as Morocco’s retaliation for Spain’s decision to allow a pro-independence leader from the disputed Western Sahara region to be treated for Covid-19 at a Spanish hospital. That, combined with a border closed by Morocco for two years to control the pandemic, damaged the economy on both side of the frontier. Tensions were only calmed and the border reopened after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI in April.
But for many people like Hosain, who live or work in Ceuta, the game won’t tear them in two. It is more like a win-win scenario: they will be happy for either Spain or Morocco to reach the quarter-finals and will pull for the winner to go all the way and lift the World Cup trophy in Qatar.
Mohamed Laarbi, 28, manages a bar in Ceuta that is showing all the World Cup matches. He is a third-generation Spaniard and is fully backing Spain. Regardless of the result, he does not expect the game to lead to any serious problems like the riots in Belgium and the Netherlands after Morocco beat Belgium in the group phase.
“Morocco is playing well, but when they meet Spain they will hit a wall,” he joked. “And then the game is over. That is it.”
Even so, Laarbi acknowledged that he and other Muslims from Ceuta or the other Spanish territory of Melilla farther east on the coast are caught in a no man’s land.
“Moroccans say that we are not Moroccan, that we are sons of Spaniards, while Spaniards from the (Iberian) Peninsula say that we are not Spaniards,” he said. “There are people from the peninsula who when you say you are from Ceuta, you have to show them where it is, and they say: ‘That is Africa.’”
Morocco’s team is a reflection of the links with Spain, where Moroccans make up the single largest foreign community with 800,000 residents in a country of 47 million. Several Moroccan players play for Spanish clubs, including Sevilla striker Youssef En-Nesyri and goalkeeper Yassine Bounou. Talented right-back Achraf Hakimi, a Paris Saint-Germain player, was born in Madrid.
For Mohamed Et Touzani, a 35-year-old hairdresser in Ceuta, the message is clear: just enjoy the game. Originally from central Morocco, Et Touzani has lived in different parts of Spain for 15 years and said it is “like my home”. He has a house, like many people with Moroccan roots, across the border. He plans to watch the game with Spanish friends at what he called a Christian bar in Ceuta. He will cheer for Morocco.
“Soccer is soccer, and politics are politics. So we are going to play a soccer game and have a good time, but with respect. That is the most important thing,” he said. “Morocco has red and green [in its flag], Spain has red and yellow. We have this in common. We are neighbours, and we must live like we were brothers.”
It is a mistake that has never really been fully explained. “He didn’t expect it and didn’t understand what had happened,” Achraf Hakimi’s brother Nabil recalled. “They had a game near Bilbao and when they got there they told him he couldn’t play.”
Fifa’s decision to ban Hakimi in September 2016 as part of its investigation into whether Real Madrid had illegally signed underage players from overseas certainly came as a shock to everyone, not least the teenage full-back who had just made his first-team debut for Zinedine Zidane’s side on their pre-season tour.
“I think Fifa was only checking rare names from immigrants more than where the boy was born, which is what happened with him,” said Rabie Takassa, who works as a scout in Spain for the Moroccan Football Federation, in an interview in 2017. “They saw a Moroccan name and he was punished without deserving it. Real Madrid and his family gave all the papers required showing he was born in a hospital in Madrid, that he studied here, that he spent all his life growing up here. It was a complicated time for him because he didn’t know when Fifa would give him the green light to play again.”
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Along with Zidane’s sons Enzo and Luca, Hakimi was back a few weeks later in Real’s reserve side and made his senior debut for Morocco the following month in a 4–0 win against Canada. He had represented the Atlas Lions at junior level and Spain’s attempt to persuade the attacking right-back who grew up in Getafe – a suburb of Madrid – to accept a call-up for their under-19s a year before had fallen on deaf ears.
“I discovered him in 2010 and I’ve been keeping an eye on him since then,” Takassa said. “We’ve spoken with him regularly and the federation’s technical director travelled to Madrid to see him. We’ve outlined our project, which is very competitive, and I don’t think he’s ever had any doubts.”
Hakimi will win his 58th cap, at the age of 24, in Morocco’s historic showdown against Spain in the last 16 of the World Cup on Tuesday. It will be a poignant moment for the Paris Saint-Germain player, who celebrated the famous victory over Belgium in the group stage by kissing his mother in the stands and will now attempt to go one better than the 1986 side that lost to West Germany at this stage. “I love you Mum,” Hakimi tweeted after the match, accompanied by photos of them embracing.
Achraf Hakimi should be ready to face Spain despite sustaining a thigh injury in Morocco’s World Cup opener. Photograph: Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images
Saida Mou, Hakimi’s mother, used to clean houses in the Spanish capital, and her husband was a street vendor. “We come from a modest family that struggled to earn a living,” Hakimi said in an interview when he joined Borussia Dortmund on loan from Madrid in 2018. “Today I fight every day for them. They sacrificed themselves for me. They deprived my brothers of many things for me to succeed.”
At the last count, there were almost 900,000 Moroccans living in Spain, making them the largest foreign community legally settled in the country. Hakimi is by no means the only member of Walid Regragui’s cosmopolitan squad who was born overseas.
Only 12 – the fewest of any nation in Qatar – were born in the country they are representing in an illustration of Morocco’s large diaspora. The winger Sofiane Boufal and captain Romain Saïss were, like Regragui, born and raised in France; the midfield general Sofyan Amrabat and Hakim Ziyech grew up in the Netherlands; and several of the squad were born in Belgium, such as Genk’s emerging talent Bilal El Khannous. The reserve goalkeeper Munir was born in Melilla, an autonomous city of Spain on the north African mainland.
Even with Ziyech’s return after he announced his international retirement following a disagreement with the former coach Vahid Halilhodzic, Hakimi remains the team’s star. Having become the first Moroccan to play for Real Madrid, in 2017, his brilliant two-year spell in the Bundesliga earned a move to Internazionale, where he thrived under Antonio Conte and won the scudetto. Hakimi turned down a move to Chelsea to join PSG for an initial €60m last year and has developed a strong understanding with Lionel Messi. But his qualities are no less appreciated by Regragui, particularly after the assist for Morocco’s second goal in the final group match against Canada, when his brilliant pass from his own half set up Youssef En-Nesyri to score.
“Look at Hakimi – he played injured to the very last minute; all Moroccans should praise him every day,” Regragui said after Morocco sealed top spot in Group F.
The thigh injury he sustained in the opening match against Croatia is being carefully managed by Morocco’s medical staff but there is little doubt Hakimi will be ready to face the country of his birth.
“Here in Paris you play for the team of the city, but it’s not the same to play with the team of your country,” Hakimi said in an interview before the World Cup with Vogue Arabia that also featured his wife, the actor Hiba Abouk, who is best known for her role in El Príncipe, a TV drama set in Ceuta, another Spanish autonomous city in northern Morocco.
“Millions and millions of people are going to support you because you play for them. It’s like you play for your grandfather and their grandfathers. You play for a lot of people, a lot of Moroccans.”
Luis Enrique was the last to know, or so he claimed. It was after midnight before he found out just how close he and his team had come to disaster at Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, the realisation caught on cameras. How had he felt during those three minutes when Spain were out of the World Cup, he was asked in the post-match press conference after his team’s 2-1 defeat by Japan. What was going through his mind? Instead of an answer, there was an “eh?!” and another question. “Three minutes out, why?!” he replied.
A conversation followed in which only Luis Enrique’s half could be heard properly, the journalist’s microphone having been handed back. Usefully, it served as proof, evidence of his approach, the single-mindedness that sets him apart. That at least was the way he was playing it. “You didn’t know?” he was asked. “No,” the coach said. “I’m not focused on the other game; I’m only concentrating on mine …
“Were we knocked out at some point? … When? Why? … Costa Rica were winning 2-1? … You see? Well, fantastic … Of course. I didn’t know. At no point did I find out. My discourse is sincere. I didn’t come here to speculate. I’m not happy that we lost to Japan. I want the best from my team, to win every game… [if I had known we were] out three minutes, I would have had a heart attack.”
Luis Enrique had already spoken to the media by then: there are pitchside positions to go through before coaches get to the press conference room, and although it might not have been expressed explicitly, that momentary elimination had been implicit. If he really didn’t know, others did. What was happening in the other game, where Costa Rica briefly led, was put on the giant screens and when Jordi Alba came on after 67 minutes, he was the bearer of bad news.
“I was looking at the scoreboard and I could see halfway through the second half that we were out,” Pedri admitted. “Jordi came on and said that we had to score, that we were out. We wanted to score but it didn’t come.”
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Did Luis Enrique really not know? There was something in that post-match exchange which felt a little like protesting too much. By then, it was easy to go all conspiratorial, even if only with tongues wedged firmly in cheeks. Spain had been beaten by Japan but things had turned out rather nicely. Sometimes it is better to lose and for all that the coach talked about wanting to win always, this was one of those times. Perhaps Spain had pulled off an elaborate heist. Maybe it was all an act, Luis Enrique playing the part of Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mastermind of our time.
When Costa Rica took a 2-1 lead against Germany it briefly placed Spain third in World Cup Group E. Germany’s eventual 4-2 win saved La Roja. Photograph: Molly Darlington/Reuters
Nah. Maybe it wasn’t of course, but it was fun to imagine and, boy, had it worked out. After all, Spain had gone through anyway and, by losing, knocked out Germany. Finishing second instead of first meant facing Morocco and possibly Portugal rather than Croatia and probably Brazil. Theirs was now the easier side of the draw, or so it is thought. They had even earned themselves an extra day’s rest. And Luis Enrique said “this punch in the face might be good, helping us realise that this is the World Cup”. Asked if this defeat would knock their confidence, Pau Torres replied: “No, not at all. The opposite: this puts us on alert.”
And who says that Morocco is easier? And is ending up on France and England’s side of the draw really a good thing? “That reading of things is a trap,” the coach said. Pedri added: “There were a lot of things missing from us. They were very intense and left us very little space.” Asked what he had felt sitting on the bench, knowing that Spain were heading out, César Azpilicueta said: “That we had to turn it round as soon as possible! It’s hard to create optimism after a defeat like this. Now we need a cold head. Let’s hope this is useful for us in the future.”
“It was five minutes, no more,” Luis Enrique insisted afterwards. He said the game had gone “mad” and that can happen when a team “has nothing to lose”. Spain had been caught in that moment, unable to control it. Worse, he said they had gone into “collapse mode” and that is a concern. “Japan scored two and if they had needed three, they would have got three,” he said. “We are a long way from where we want to be.”
Only they are where they want to be, of course: in the last 16. The impression was a bad one but they were still standing, still there. Did you know how close you came to elimination, Álvaro Morata was asked. It was only five minutes after full time but he insisted: “There’s no point in remembering that. It’s done. Sometimes you just have to get through the bad moments together and we did that today. We have to wipe out all the toxic stuff and be positive, more united than ever. No one ever went a long way in the World Cup without suffering. You’d have to ask some other teams if they would have liked to give a bad impression but got through.”
Not content with one jaw-dropping shock, Japan managed a second in feverish conditions here to beat a multi-talented Spanish side and claim another place for Asia in the last 16 of this increasingly unpredictable World Cup. Two goals in quick succession after half-time from Ritsu Doan and Ao Tanaka shocked Spain cold, taking their metronomic rhythms and throwing them into a bin bag that was then politely disposed of.
The Europeans still qualified for the knockout stages, in second place on goal difference ahead of Germany, but if this was a deliberate attempt to choose an easier path through the draw, nobody told that to their shellshocked players. The opening goal came early, in the 12th minute, by which point Spain had already had enough probing possession to have pushed Japan back into a nervous, flat back five.
The move was clever too, starting with combination play between Gavi and Nico Williams on the right. The teenager attempted a low cross that was cleared, but only out to the winger, who looked up and slipped the ball into space on the edge of the area vacated by defenders, but now occupied by Cesar Azpilicueta. The Chelsea man calmly floated a cross on to the penalty spot and Alvaro Morata headed the ball down, back across goal and past Shuichi Gonda.
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There were no further clear-cut chances in the opening period but it felt all the time like one was never far away. Spain were dominating possession of course – with 80% of the ball in the opening 40 minutes and an additional 8% “in contest” according to the official stats – but the options Luis Enrique’s team were offering up were bewildering. Key to it all was the movement of Gavi and Pedri, the Barcelona pair operating like moons around Busquets, spinning in orbit, but with a trajectory hidden from the opponent.
Spain’s only enemy was themselves, the propensity for coughing up possession as they built from defence something that had nearly cost them against Germany and continued here. Busquets lost the ball on the edge of the box in the eighth minute, though nothing came of it, while Simon had to scramble a clearance off his own line on the half-hour after having dawdled too long on the ball.
Japan’s Kaoru Mitoma stretches to try to keep the ball in play in the lead-up to the winner. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP
At half-time Hajime Moriyasu made a double substitution, taking off the former Real Madrid man Takefusa Kubo and the veteran wing-back Yuto Nagatomo and replacing them with Brighton’s Kaoru Mitoma and Doan of Freiburg. The impact was immediate.
Under the cosh from a renewed Japanese press, the Spaniards’ achilles heel erupted just three minutes after the restart. A jittery Simon played a loose pass out to the left-back Alejandro Balde who was unable to clear before Doan was upon him, seizing possession and bundling towards the box. The midfielder unleashed a shot with all the power he could muster, which was way more than Simon could handle and the keeper palmed the ball into the roof of his net.
The atmosphere in the Khalifa Stadium kicked up a notch immediately and before anyone had had a chance to catch their breath Japan – who had looked set for a hiding just minutes before – were suddenly in front. Again it was Doan who made it, again bulldozing his way past a now bewildered Balde and crossing to the left hand side where Mitoma cut the ball back for Tanaka to bundle home.
Japanese players were delirious, their subs on the pitch, only for the goal to be ruled out by the referee Victor Gomes; the ball having apparently gone out of play as Mitoma kicked it. Of course the gods of VAR then deliberated – aided by the positional sensor in the Al Rihla ball – and they found the goal was good. The ball had stayed in by fractions, people’s fancy dress headdresses were coming off in disbelief.
A flurry of substitutions for both sides followed, with both Morata and Gavi withdrawn for Spain, but gone altogether was the Spanish composure as suddenly, ludicrously, they faced the possibility of elimination. For a minute or two it was even a reality, when Costa Rica took a brief lead against Germany.
In the 70th minute Japan created the next great chance of the game, springing a counter in which Mitoma played Takuma Asano clear through on goal, only for the substitute to slip and scoop his shot when, had he stayed upright, he would surely have been favourite to score. As the game entered its last knockings, Japan rediscovered the same determination that had seen them over the line against Germany a week ago, with blocks to deny Marco Asensio and a low save from Gonda holding a dangerous Dani Olmo shot. And when the final whistle came, all was bedlam.
Aymeric Laporte is having a terrible World Cup, but he doesn’t care. He also has a convenient excuse, or so he claims: there is someone else to blame. At the Spain camp, where the players set off for training pitch No 3 by scooter each morning, they have organised a predictions league for the tournament. On the eve of the selección’s third game – and, no, no one went for 7-0 against Costa Rica – leading the way is Fernando Giner, the team delegate. Top of the players is Gavi. The Manchester City defender is down at the bottom.
“Not great,” he says, then quick as a flash he adds: “But the thing is, I’m not doing it myself. Someone’s doing it for me.” Who? “I can’t say.” Laporte cracks up. Betting is not really his thing, he says, and nor it turns out is football. He loves playing, but this is different. In the TV room, five or six players gather for every game; he isn’t often one of them. “I’m not a football addict. Honestly, I don’t like watching matches,” he admits. He’s seen enough, though, to know one thing: there isn’t a team better than Spain.
At the start of the tournament, before anyone had played, Laporte was asked why Spain would win the World Cup. His response was three words long: “And why not?” Two weeks and one day since the national team touched down in Doha, 34 games into the competition, including the night they scored seven and the 1-1 draw with Germany, has he come up with any reasons why not yet? This time, perched on a stool in a side room at the training base, the response is even shorter: “Nope.”
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There is a short pause, a smile, and he adds: “Reasons why [we will].” And they are? “They’re there for everyone to see. Our play is an example for lots of national teams. We play very well, we have spectacular footballers, we move the ball. Against Germany, one of the best teams in the world, we showed we can play. The ability to manage the ball, to dominate possession, to find passing lines. Frankly, I think we have been very good.”
Have you seen anyone better? “In terms of play: sincerely, no. Individually, there are lots of teams with really great players but in terms of the football, the play, very few [like us].”
The Germany game reinforced that even if it also left a feeling of missed opportunity. Qualification could have been all but secured and a potential contender left close to elimination; instead, Spain may still need something from their final game against Japan to progress and Germany could go through with them. “We feel like we dropped two points along the way,” Laporte concedes. “But to be 1-0 up in the 83rd minute against Germany you have to do a lot of good things, especially when they had more need than us. We’re a bit frustrated but happy.
“We lost a stupid ball, there’s a rebound, they get it, and … football is small details and letting in that goal was a small detail. Small things decide games, here, there or anywhere; especially when it’s even like with Germany. I don’t know if it’s a moment’s inattention or good fortune for them, but that was the difference.”
Aymeric Laporte says Spain were ‘frustrated but happy’ after the 1-1 draw with Germany. Photograph: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images
If that opportunity was lost, others present themselves. After the game, Antonio Rüdiger sneaked up to his clubmate Dani Carvajal and whispered in his ear, asking him to ensure Spain beat Japan. Much has been made of the possibility that they could choose not to as a way of pushing Germany towards the exit, and there have even been suggestions Spain would be better off engineering a second place to avoid Brazil.
Too much, Laporte insists. It doesn’t even make sense, Spain are not in a position to run risks. “Nothing’s clear: no one has anything assured,” he says. As for the pathway, he insists: “I haven’t even looked.” He grins but it’s believable. “I haven’t looked, haven’t done the predictions, haven’t done anything.” Do you even know which group yours crosses with? Spoiler: it’s F. “No idea.” You could tell him anything. England next. Laporte laughs. “Honestly, when I play for City, I don’t even know what time kick-off is. My family call and say: hey, what time tomorrow? ‘I don’t know.’”
Have you ever been late, then? The punchline, unlike him, is delivered with perfect timing. “Yes, yesterday.”
Laporte continues: “We had the Japan team talk this morning and what we’re going to try to do is win, like we always do. We didn’t come here to speculate, we came to win. We want to show we’re the same national team as ever.”
It is a national team that perhaps more than any other has a clearly defined identity, built throughout the system. Of the squad, only three players have not been youth internationals for Spain. Two are the substitute goalkeepers, the other is Laporte, who initially played for France, the country of his birth. It is, though, a style he believes in and there are obvious parallels with his club. Which is not to say Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola are the same.
Gavi and Aymeric Laporte celebrate during the 7-0 rout of Costa Rica. Photograph: Clive Mason/Getty Images
“They are very different, despite having the same idea of keeping the ball,” Laporte says. “Both want the ball to manage the game but it’s true that with Guardiola you try to unbalance your opponents a bit more, taking even more risks than here. Here maybe they are risks that are more necessary. With Spain, it’s exactly the same ambition, same principles, same idea now as we’ve followed from the first moment I joined.”
Alongside him is another City player, although that too is different. Rodri Hernández has played at centre-back for City but as a solution in place of Laporte; they have never played together at club level. Here, they have been partners for the opening two games. It’s going well, too.
“Rodri’s intelligent, he knows how to adapt,” Laporte says. “It’s different for him. He seeks advice, asks a lot of questions; it’s all very natural. We’ve only let in one and we hope there aren’t any more. Basically, I answer the questions he asks. Do I step out? When do we drop? Do I have to go with the striker when he runs into the space? Do I hold? Do I follow? Do I step out with the ball? He asks lots of questions: being firm, decision-making, with the ball, without it. And I try to help as best I can.”
We’ve had a false 9, could this be the start of a false 4? Actually, there’s a thought: does the word “false” annoy you? “Not me,” Laporte grins. “I don’t play as a false anything.”
Other things do annoy him, though. He has reflected on the world he inhabits before. And in fact, some of the reaction, the way his words were interpreted, pretty much proved him right. “I love playing football, really love it, but it’s everything that goes around it,” he says. Asked what is it he doesn’t like, there’s a pause.
Oh. Is it us? “That too,” he says, smiling. “It’s a bit of everything. I don’t know. I’ve always played football because I’ve always loved it; it’s my passion. But what matters on the pitch isn’t always reflected away from football. And that could annoy me. It doesn’t reach the point where it annoys me because I don’t even look, I don’t read. The less I watch the better.”
As a kid Laporte watched football, collected stickers, the whole thing, he says. So when did the disenchantment start? Another punchline, perfectly delivered. “When I started playing, basically,” he says, and cracks up again.
“There’s so much talk, so many opinions. An example: after a game, one says: ‘He was terrible.’ Another says: ‘He was the best.’ It doesn’t bother me because I don’t even see it. What annoys footballers isn’t direct criticism; we’re used to it. It’s the family, the friends. So many people who haven’t played talk and they’re more influential than the players themselves. And you see [former] footballers who say things that if other players had done it [about them] they would get annoyed. Lots of people getting involved, talking, you know?”
Laporte would rather just play football. Or other sports. He dashes off, not to the TV room but in the direction of the pool. The table tennis table awaits too. “Right-handed,” the left-footer says. Asked whether he is one of the better players, the yes and the glint in his eye suggest he might be very good. “Si, si” he says again, grinning. But didn’t Luis Enrique say Pedri was the best? “Because he hasn’t seen me play,” Laporte shoots back. Predictions might not be his thing but give him a ping‑pong bat or better still put him on the pitch and this World Cup gets a whole lot better.
Luis Enrique, the Spain coach, has asked himself whether it might be better not to win Group E and instead finish second to avoid Brazil, which is precisely why his team will not try to engineer an easy route through the World Cup.
The selección are top of the group and victory against Japan on Thursdaywould guarantee progress as group winners, but they also know a point would see them through to the last 16 and avoid Brazil in the quarter-final
“We have reflected on it,” Luis Enrique said, “but from a professional point of view, imagine that we speculate. ‘OK, we want to be second, that’s in our interests.’ We get to the 95th minute and in both games it’s 0-0, 0-0, [thinking:] ‘Everything’s going great.’ And then Costa Rica go and score and Japan score. And in 15 seconds you’re out because you have been speculating for 90 minutes. Or the other way round: Germany are winning 5-0 and we’re drawing and that will do and then Japan score and you’re out.
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“When you’re a very good team and you want to play seven games, you want to be first. We play the team that’s second in Group F, right? And then in the quarter-final … in theory it’s Brazil. OK, great. We play Brazil then. We can’t count like the milkmaid.”
The milkmaid’s metaphor is an equivalent to counting your chickens, a parable in which the protagonist believes the milk her cow produces will allow her to buy a goat, a horse and a farm until one day she trips and spills all the milk.
Luis Enrique also drew on a real-world parallel, citing summer’s basketball European championshipwhen Croatia deliberately missed a late free throw to finish third in the group rather than second, allowing them to go into what they thought was the easier half of the draw that included Spain, who they wanted to face. They lost their first knockout game to Finland and didn’t even get to face Spain, who went on to win it.
“Elite sport doesn’t let you speculate,” Luis Enrique said. “To win a World Cup, you have to beat everyone, or everyone you face. So that’s what we’re going to try to do.
With Gerard Piqué retiring from football and Sergio Ramos overlooked for the World Cup squad, 2022 has been the end of an era for Spanish centre-backs. Luis Enrique took some criticism for not calling up Ramos – the most capped player in Spain’s history – but the manager stuck to his guns and deserves credit for doing so.
Luis Enrique selected four centre-backs in his squad for Qatar: Aymeric Laporte, Pau Torres and Eric García, who went to the Euros last summer, and the versatile youngster Hugo Guillamón. Yet, despite the availability of these experienced centre-backs, Luis Enrique has used Rodri alongside his Manchester City teammate Laporte at the heart of defence in Spain’s first two games in Qatar.
The dilemma for Spain, as usual, is that they have too many brilliant central midfielders. Gavi and Pedri, despite their youth, are guaranteed starters considering their technical quality, and they benefit from having their experienced Barcelona teammate, Sergio Busquets, alongside them to anchor the midfield.
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Busquets, the only World Cup winner in the squad, is now 34 but we all saw how much Spain struggled without him at the Euros last year. He missed Spain’s first two games at the tournament and they laboured to draws with Sweden and Poland. It’s a tricky one for Luis Enrique: he doesn’t want to lose his captain but he knows Busquets no longer has the legs to control the middle of the park. Given the make-up of his squad, Luis Enrique’s decision to pick Busquets at the base of the midfield and use Rodri in the centre of defence could be a masterstroke.
Rodri was used at the heart of defence by Pep Guardiola – obviously – on a handful of occasions in the 2019-20 campaign, but he is inexperienced in the role. Throwing him in at the deep end at a World Cup was a risk, but Rodri has handled it well. At 6ft 2in, he has the physicality to play the role and he is brilliant at dispossessing opponents – only Declan Rice (82) has won possession in the midfield third more times than Rodri (70) in the Premier League this season. Rodri has the tools to excel at centre-back in the modern game, given his tenacity off the ball and impressive distribution when in possession.
In the long term, Rodri will surely take over from Busquets as the anchor of the Spain midfield – the player in the team who dictates the tempo and helps them dominate possession. His performances at the Euros last year suggest he wasn’t quite ready for the role, but he is developing under Guardiola and will no doubt have a future further up the pitch for the national team. For now, though, Busquets brings experience and balance to the side, and picking the Barcelona captain remains Spain’s best option.
Gavi and Pedri have the freedom to push on and make nuisances of themselves in the final third, safe in the knowledge that Busquets is easing the defensive burden behind them. With such a short lead-in to this World Cup, it helps that the three of them have been working together and forging a relationship and understanding at Barcelona.
When Spain have the ball, Rodri steps into midfield to help build up play. He is a natural at keeping the ball – he has made more passes (1,203) than any other player in the Premier League this season – and he gives Spain more control in games. Picking Rodri against Costa Rica made sense. Spain were expected to dominate the ball and obliterate their opponents – which they did in some style, winning 7-0 – so having an extra midfielder at the back to help build up play seemed smart. Using Rodri against the much tougher Germany, though, was a huge show of faith by Luis Enrique.
Aymeric Laporte (left) has helped his Manchester City teammate Rodri (right) settle in defence for Spain. Photograph: Zabulon Laurent/Shutterstock
It may seem harsh on Torres and García, who are fine ball playing centre-backs. García had the best pass success rate (95.5%) in the squad at the Euros last summer, while Torres (93.9%) ranked third. So why has Luis Enrique opted for Rodri? Perhaps because he offers better balance at the back. Torres, Laporte and García all prefer to play on the left side of a centre-back pairing. With Rodri dropping back into the right-sided role, Laporte is able to stay on the left, where he is more comfortable. This results in a more stable defensive unit.
Bar a minor lapse against Germany on Sunday – when he failed to contain Jamal Musiala in the buildup to Niclas Füllkrug’s equaliser – Rodri’s deployment at centre-back has been a success story so far. If Spain go all the way in the tournament, Luis Enrique’s brave, creative decision to partner Laporte with Rodri will be a key reason behind their success.
