Spain's Ferran Torres (7) and Rodri (16) celebrate after Mikel Merino (6) scored their team's first goal during the World Cup round of 16 match against Portugal on Monday.Tony Gutierrez/The Associated Press
For most of the past 76 years, the last eight has been the high-water mark for Spanish World Cup adventures.
Despite four European Championship titles on its mantle, and more than 2,000 days sitting atop the FIFA world rankings, on the sport’s biggest stage, La Roja has largely flattered to deceive.
As soccer columnist and author Jonathan Wilson wrote in his recent book, The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup, when it comes to Spain’s historical progress at the tournament, “the sense of anti-climax was familiar.”
Of course, the exception to that long stretch of indignity took place 16 years ago in South Africa, when a team guided by a midfield triumvirate from Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team helped fill the void in the country’s trophy cabinet. Leaning heavily on a possession-based strategy, that squad squeezed the life out of the opposition – death by 1,000 passes if you will – scoring eight goals in seven matches, conceding just two.
With that as the backdrop, it’s with an understandable mixture of confidence and trepidation that Spain heads into its quarter-final against Belgium on Friday, looking to reach the semi-finals for just the second time since the 1950 World Cup.
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The country’s record at the tournament since that 2010 apogee has been anything but glorious – a group-stage exit in 2014 followed by consecutive round-of-16 defeats on penalties in 2018 and 2022. Indeed, in those three tournaments the team managed to win just three of 12 matches.
But this year’s edition has scarcely put a cleat wrong, unless you count getting held to a goalless draw by Cape Verde in the opener – a result which looks far less egregious after watching the Blue Sharks put the fear of God into Argentina last Friday.
Since then, Spain’s tournament has exploded into life. It put four past Saudi Arabia, before wrapping up the round-robin stage in edging Uruguay by a solitary goal. Austria was then swept aside in the round of 32, before Mikel Merino’s injury-time goal saw off Portugal on Monday.
Much like the 2010 vintage, this year’s Spain squad rarely gives much away, and as a result is yet to concede a goal through five matches.
Head coach Luis de la Fuente welcomed the comparison to Spain's 2010 World Cup-winning squad, but emphasized his team is solely focused on its quarter-final match with Belgium over anything else.Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images
Add in the 0-0 draw that precipitated its penalty-shootout loss to Morocco four years ago, and Spain is the first team ever to register six straight clean sheets at the World Cup.
While that 2010 championship team understandably remains the gold standard by which all other Spanish World Cup squads will be measured by, Spain coach Luis de la Fuente doesn’t see it as pressure. Conversely, he welcomes such comparisons.
“I think the fact that you might be compared to such a spectacular squad from the past is a great honour indeed,” he said through a translator. “It is something that would make us proud. But that was a spectacular team, it was a brilliant team.”
The backbone of the current squad’s defensive rigidity, goalkeeper Unai Simón, has gone a tournament-record 609 minutes without conceding a goal. His latest clean sheet, against Portugal on Monday, stretched Spain’s unbeaten run to a national-team-record-equalling 35 matches. Its last loss came in a 1-0 friendly defeat to Colombia in London in March, 2024.
“We’re certainly on a roll,” Simón said through an interpreter. “Not just because of the World Cup, but because of the momentum we’re been building within the squad and with Luis beforehand.”
Of course, the current Spain squad knows its way around the deep end of tournaments. Just two years ago, it became the first team to win all seven matches on its way to claiming its fourth European Championship title, scoring a record 15 goals in doing so.
And if it can get past Belgium on Friday, its final two opponents might have a very familiar tinge to them.
France would be first up in next week’s semi-final, with Spain having beaten the French at the same stage in Euro 2024, and then a year later in the Nations League final four. If it could get past the world’s No. 1-ranked team for a third consecutive time, it could possibly meet England in the final, a rematch of the Euro championship decider, when Spain emerged with a 2-1 victory.
But both of those hypothetical matches would lie beyond the quarter-final stage, a historically elusive destination for the Spanish men’s national team. De la Fuentes talked on Thursday about trying to control only those things that he can control, starting with Friday’s game.
“Trust me, we are not thinking about anything other than Belgium,” he said. “If we overcome our match with Belgium, if we beat Belgium, then we’ll start talking about France.”