"If we think that being favourites guarantees anything, we're on the wrong track... it guarantees nothing!" That's Spain's head coach Luis de la Fuente, embracing the pre-tournament billing with one hand and swatting away any sense of entitlement with the other.
Spain arrive at the 2026 World Cup off the back of their Euro 2024 triumph — a tournament they won playing some of the most fluid, attacking football seen from a national team in years. The pressure that comes with that is real, and De la Fuente knows it. But he frames it as fuel rather than weight, insisting Spain approach this tournament "with the enthusiasm of those who want to achieve something significant."
The favourites tag is earned. But De la Fuente's warning is worth taking seriously. He counts eight to ten teams at this World Cup he'd class as "absolutely top-class" — and in a 48-team tournament spread across three countries with gruelling travel schedules, intense heat, time zone shifts, and compressed recovery windows, the gap between contenders and champions is going to be decided by who manages their squad best, not just who has the best players.
Yamal, Williams and Merino edging closer
Spain's injury situation had been a genuine concern heading into the tournament. Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams both picked up hamstring injuries in mid-April. Mikel Merino has been out since January following surgery on a stress fracture in his right foot.
De la Fuente is cautiously optimistic all three will be available for Spain's Group H opener against Cape Verde on June 15, though he's not committing them to starting. "That doesn't mean they'll play," he said, leaving the door open to easing them in gradually — or keeping them fresh for later rounds.
Given that Yamal and Williams were arguably the two most exciting attackers at Euro 2024, their fitness will shape Spain's title odds more than almost anything else. A full-strength Spain attacking unit is a different proposition entirely to one without them.
Rotation will be the strategy, not the exception
De la Fuente has made clear that Spain's 26-man squad won't operate with a fixed first XI. With "long journeys, intense heat, varying temperatures, humidity, time zones" all part of the equation, he sees this as a squad tournament more than any before it — and he's managing it that way from day one.
"We will rotate as we see fit at any given moment," he said. "My biggest concern right now is that no injuries should occur."
That's a sensible read on a tournament that's never been run at this scale before. The teams that win World Cups don't always have the best starting eleven — they have the best squad depth and the coaching staff smart enough to use it. Spain's depth, on paper, is as good as anyone's. Whether De la Fuente deploys it well is the real question.
He's spent over a decade building toward this from Spain's grassroots programmes upward. The favourites label, he says, is long overdue recognition of that work. Now the tournament itself has to prove him right.
