Luis Enrique, the fearless coach

Luis Enrique faces the first World Cup of his life as a coach (he played in three as a player) with a remarkable resume and at the head of a renewed team without great figures with whom he hopes to surprise again.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
17 November 2022 Thursday 23:36
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Luis Enrique, the fearless coach

Luis Enrique faces the first World Cup of his life as a coach (he played in three as a player) with a remarkable resume and at the head of a renewed team without great figures with whom he hopes to surprise again. He did it in the 2021 Euro Cup, reaching the semifinals against all odds and deserving more, and he has repeated it in the last two editions of the Nations League, qualifying in both cases for the final phases. The pattern has been repeated in all competitions. Unfavorable forecasts and response on the pitch above expectations. It will be necessary to see until where it arrives in the appointment of Qatar. The anteroom is repeated: the favorites are others.

The Spanish Federation asked Luis Enrique for a profound change in the team, which failed four years ago in Russia (they fell in the round of 16) as they had done before in Brazil 2014 (out in the group stage), and the work entrusted to them has been carried out. carried out with determination and without trembling. The Asturian's lists are usually a spectacle, due to the way he communicates them (the penultimate one, climbing mountain passes on the back of a road bike, a sport he is passionate about) and the reactions he provokes.

If something characterizes the coach, it is that he does not allow himself to be pressured by anyone. He decides whatever is said. If that implies dispensing with Sergio Ramos (rightly) in the face of overacted opposition from the Madrid media, summoning Gavi at the age of 17 with the same reaction or leaving Iago Aspas out despite his numbers as a scorer, then go ahead. Luis Enrique was always immune to noise, capable of even calling footballers whose existence was unknown to the general public, in the case of Brentford goalkeeper David Raya in his day.

Luis Enrique is a kind of Luis Aragonés 2.0., a type of rocky principles and stubbornness, little given to populist concessions (Luis Enrique's Sergio Ramos was his distant predecessor's Raúl) and highly respected by the players. The coach likes to form granitic work groups, starting with his staff and projecting that feeling of fidelity towards the footballers, who are won over because with him they feel protected from the outside and on an equal footing with respect to the other teammates.

Devoted to the application of technology in elite football, the coach asks for physical and mental effort to deploy his demanding game plan, decidedly offensive and with many legs to execute pressure after loss that is his trademark, and in return he offers unwavering loyalty. If you fail him, as Robert Moreno did in his day, there is no going back.

The World Cup in Qatar is a challenge that Luis Enrique, at 52, faces as he always did, without fear of what people will say, without fear of anything. More convinced than the most dedicated fan of what he is capable of making his team.