This is the third time in a row that the national team has been eliminated from a major tournament in a penalty shootout, but Spain is still shocked.
Just like four and a half years ago in Russia, this time, too, her spirit was devoted to her non-stop and she was unable to implement the main goal of the soccer game - to kick the goal and score.
The one who signed the Spanish heartbreak this time was the surprising Moroccan team, especially goalkeeper Yassin Bono who stopped the penalties of Carlos Soler and Sergio Busquets.
Pablo Sarabia kicked his penalty into the crossbar and the team suffered a humiliating 3:0 penalty shootout in the round of 16 of the 2022 World Cup.
The worrying similarity to the round of 16 in 2018 frustrates the Spaniards the most, and in "Marca" it is claimed that the local football association expects Luis Enrique to take responsibility for the failure and inform On the end of his position: "We returned to what happened four years ago, as if we were still in Moscow."
Will take responsibility?
Luis Enrique (Photo: Reuters)
"Luis Enrique arrived after the 2018 World Cup, and Spanish football has not developed since then, it is in the same situation," Marca wrote, "in the association we admit that nothing has changed in the last four years."
Spain has not won a knockout game in the World Cup since the 2010 final, and now the trust of the association in Luis Enrique "is no longer what it was" according to "the brand", "in football you live from result to result, and this time the result was not good".
In Spain they also added that a number of events that took place in the training camp created a distance between the association and the coach.
Enrique actually finished his contract (it expired at the end of 2022), and now the association expects him to be the one to speak and take responsibility.
According to them, in previous national teams that were not successful, it was the coach who announced the end of his position.
Will he make the jump to the senior team?
de la Fuente (photo: GettyImages, Mateo Villalba)
Three candidates have already been identified as potential replacements for Enrique, with the current leader being Luis de la Fuente, the coach of the youth team.
De la Fuente, who knows the system and working in the association and national teams well, led Spain to win the U19 and U21 Euros and an Olympic medal and is now considered the preferred candidate for the job.
Another name well known to Spanish league watchers is Marcelino, who left Athletic Bilbao this summer and has also coached Sevilla, Villarreal and Valencia in recent years.
Another candidate is Roberto Martins, who recently ended his career as coach of the Belgium national team after the disappointing elimination in the group stage.
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