Spain coach Moreno - From the guard to the national coach

Anyone who reads through the names of the national coaches of Europe's football elite, should stumble in the European Championship qualifiers this weekend over a name. In addition to Didier Deschamps, Roberto Mancini, Gareth Southgate, Joachim Loew or Ronald Koeman, this list also includes Robert Moreno.

Roberto Moreno?

Anyone who has never heard of the new Spanish national coach until recently can rest assured that anything else would make him a pathological nerd. Moreno has never kicked professionally against a ball. And he's never even been in charge of a men's team.

This double immaculateness should be unique in such a high profile job. It is due to the extraordinary accompanying circumstances. Because the former head coach Luis Enrique was absent since March for personal reasons in the games, co-coach Moreno had to take the coaching. He was doing well. So good that the election fell on him without much ado when Enrique announced its complete withdrawal in July. Further reasons were not initially known, only last week, Enrique announced that his nine-year-old daughter had died after months of cancer.

Security guard, department store salesman, national coach

He's been working for a lifetime for this day, says Moreno: finally to be head coach. But as a result of a family tragedy of his mentor, he certainly did not want it. Before making his official debut in the European Championship qualifier in Romania (20:45, stream: DAZN), he stirred the country when he offered to make room in the event of Luis Enrique's return. "He is my friend, and friendship is above any personal goal in life, because we are human above all others," Moreno said. It was a symbolic bow to Enrique.

The 41-year-old is a self-made man who does not have a lot of talent, but all the more enthusiasm was born in the cradle. His father was president of the club La Florida in L'Hospitalet, a simple suburb of Barcelona with endless residential towers. At the age of 14, Moreno began coaching at his school, and started training as a teenager.

While working as a security guard at a gas station, in the men's department of department store El Corte Inglés or at the bank La Caixa jobbte and studying for international management, he spent every spare minute at the amateur sites of the city. With his then girlfriend and today's wife traveled across the country and recorded countless games on video. With her, he also founded a publishing house for football books, which she now manages alone.

Analyst for Barcelona's second team

Moreno admired the genius of Johan Cruyff, absorbed the tactical innovations of Louis van Gaal, rehearsed his video methods as a youth coach at clubs in Barcelona, ​​and sometimes remained an incomprehensible one: it was all too elaborate for underclass football, even in the Spanish laboratory. His time came when he was inducted in 2008 as an analyst for the second team of FC Barcelona in the team of Luis Enrique. With the boss, it was later on to Celta Vigo, the AS Roma, Barça's first team, with whom he won the Champions League in 2015, and the national team, where he was hired as a sole assistant for the first time.

"I've shown that I can do more than make videos," he says as he lacks insecurity and urgency. "I'm no longer the boy who came to Barça B like an elephant in the china shop and wanted to show everything he knows about football." In fact, he comes so well because he radiates nothing nerdish or know-it-all.

The land of unlimited football possibilities

Nonetheless, the author of the book "Mein Rezept des 4-4-2" naturally represents the type that would be described in Germany as a "laptop trainer". Against this background, the first polemic of his term is almost a joke: In the ongoing dispute of Spain's football authorities, the Spanish league has denied the association the subscription of their coaching software "Media Coach". Moreno thinks a lot of the program - he co-developed it himself.

Vadim Ghirda / AP

Robert Moreno (right) trains a men's team as head coach for the first time

Otherwise, the first Catalan head coach of the Selección has been fifty years old in the industry. Questions about his inexperience, he always parried, sovereign, mostly pointing to his years in a locker room with Lionel Messi or Neymar. Just as he sometimes hardly distinguishes himself from the players with his boyish face, his open nature breaks many traditions. Which top coach tells how he and his friends demolished a whole row of seats in Barcelona's Camp Nou in 1994 with their jubilation after a championship won on the last matchday?

And who can not identify with the CV of a man who rose from gas station to national coach? Land of Unlimited Football Opportunities - If the circumstances were not so sad, it would be easy to say that Robert Moreno lives the Spanish dream.