The secret behind the Spanish model is certainly not tiki-taka

The recently concluded World Cup has revealed, through the words of X and a masterful and enlightening tweet by David García, a great truth: everyone, especially in Italy, wants to copy the Spanish football model, but in reality nobody has any idea just how fundamentally tedious and labour-intensive (yet productive) the work of training and developing talent that underpins it really is.

There is also another unresolved issue. We are familiar with one visible aspect of this work, about which we now know everything: Barcelona’s ‘Dutch turn’ under Cruyff and its long-term technical and cultural effects; the priority given, particularly from the 2008 European Championship onwards, not to selecting the most athletic and fastest players, but to the most intelligent and technically gifted; the central role assigned by professional clubs to their youth academies and the culture of promoting the most promising talents to the first team without waiting for them to mature later on; the continuity between the youth national teams and the senior national team, epitomised by Luis De La Fuente’s career path. As for its less visible, yet equally essential, side, however, we know very little or nothing at all, particularly in Italy.

It is therefore useful to analyse these ‘hidden’ aspects of the Spanish football model, not so much because it is actually possible to replicate them, but to gain an in-depth understanding of the reasons behind a footballing dominance that has now reached stratospheric levels, and which confirms the 21st century as the age of complex football systems – systems that succeed because they involve a complex interplay of factors both within and outside the sporting system, and within the country as a whole.

We wish to discuss three of these, relating to social, cultural and identity-related aspects.

Let’s start with the first point. The true cradle of Spanish success has a name that, at first glance, doesn’t seem to mean much: the ‘patio escolar’. These are open-air concrete areas, similar to those used for roller skating in Italian sports clubs during the 1970s and 1980s. Every school in Spain is required to have one, dedicated to recreational play at various times throughout the school day. Football – or rather, futsal, given the limited space and the small goals that are invariably present – is the undisputed star of the show. It is here – and not just in football schools – that players develop their relationship with the ball, learn to make quick decisions in tight spaces and learn to read the pitch, all of which make them intelligent players: in short, the key factors behind the Spanish style of football. To produce strong footballers, there must be a balance between informal, spontaneous football (which is not just the infamous ‘street’ football; indeed, according to experts in the field, the most important aspect comes even earlier – namely, the relationship built with the ball at home between the ages of 2 and 4) and organised, supervised football. As we have already written in "Il Foglio Sportivo", Italy has almost completely lost sight of the former. How many times and for how many hours must the young Dani Olmos and Rodris have touched the ball in their school playgrounds and during their daily kickabouts, thereby developing their neuromotor skills? Confirming, albeit in a roundabout way, the central role of football in these spaces are the recent criticisms levelled by various left-wing members of Podemos in favour of ‘de-footballising’ them, with football accused of lacking inclusivity towards children who are not passionate about the game and towards girls.

The second element is elusive in its essence, even though we saw it at MetLife Stadium during the post-match celebrations, with flags draped around the waists of many players. In many cases, these were not Spanish flags, but those of the various regional communities from which the players hailed. Spain is a collection of nations within a nation, but in football, the identity conflicts that are always latent in Spanish political life find a particular, positive form of stabilisation (although there were clashes in the Basque Country and Navarre on Sunday night).

The national team’s successes rekindle Catalan, Galician, Basque, Navarrese and Andalusian pride through the regional origins and training backgrounds of the players. This, in turn, fuels – and is simultaneously driven by – the substantial tangible and intangible investments made in the youth academies of clubs that have always seen themselves as true national teams and bastions of identity; a factor that provides extra motivation for those who play and coach at every level, and ensures that players remain deeply rooted in their clubs, continuing into the first teams primarily for this reason, in defiance of any logic of player trading. And it is important to look at the whole picture – not just Barcelona or Athletic Bilbao, but also the welcome given to Oyarzabal at La Zubieta, Real Sociedad’s training ground, or the emphatic way in which Celta Vigo celebrated Borja Iglesias, the first Galician footballer in history to win a World Cup. These geopolitical factors are key to explaining Spain’s current strength in football (and also in basketball), and are, of course, irreplicable given their historical uniqueness.

The third element is the development of human capital. This goes beyond federal coaching courses or the sports training programmes offered by universities. The devil is in the detail – even in the world of football. In Italy, for example, the so-called "enseñanzas deportivas" are virtually unknown: these are two-tier training courses (1,000 + 750 hours of training) organised by the autonomous communities, which are tasked with preparing coaches for all sports (particularly grassroots sport), with football taking a leading role. At every level and in every corner of the system, the Spanish football world demonstrates an extremely high standard of human capital development among coaches, instructors and trainers, which is then translated into data, analysis and scientific knowledge. Contemporary football is a vast machine of knowledge, and in this respect, we in Italy inhabit a very distant planet. Compared to Italy, there is also a significant wage gap to consider.