Every Monday, FIFA spotlights a World Cup record. This looks at Vicente del Bosque guiding Spain to their first star and making history.
Anyone strolling down Calle Toro that morning couldn’t have missed it. Smack bang in the middle of one of Salamanca’s busiest thoroughfares is a life-size bronze statue, in homage to one of the city’s favourite sons. Except this morning it had been vandalised, albeit in a slightly offbeat manner. The angular frame, the suit and tie and the thinning hair; everything else was in place.
The famous moustache, though, had been given quite a makeover and there stood the otherwise bronzed Vicente del Bosque with a vibrant, cream-coloured lip addition. Never mind that it was April Fool’s Day of 2019 or, indeed, that the man himself had temporarily removed the tache six months earlier. There was consternation that the bust had been defaced, and it was quickly cleaned up.
The task squared away with the kind of ruthless efficiency that Spain had displayed almost a decade earlier in procuring their maiden FIFA World Cup™ title. Made to work hard in the group stage after an upset opening defeat at the hands of the Switzerland, La Roja pass and moved their way through the knockouts with identical 1-0 results right through to the Soccer City shakedown of the Netherlands.
There they stood at football’s summit, a place that had been previously scaled by only seven others. None, though, helmed by a coach as old as 59-year-old del Bosque was on that frosty Johannesburg evening. Born in Salamanca four years after the end of World War II, Del Bosque arrived before colour television, the microwave, the jet engine and Velcro.
At South Africa 2010, you could have tallied the ages of Sergio Busquets, Pedro Rodriguez and Gerard Pique and they would have barely reached the sum total of their coach, who entered the tournament one winter shy of six decades on earth.
Appointed two years before the global finals, Del Bosque qualified Spain with ease for the African extravaganza, winning all 10 matches. The nation’s golden run continued with the continental title at UEFA EURO 2012 but, with the writing on the wall, after underwhelming outings at Brazil 2014 and the subsequent European finals, ‘El Bigoton’ resigned in the summer of 2016.
What started with a win over Denmark had ended with defeat to Italy. Across an eight-year span, Del Bosque’s principles never wavered, always a 4-3-3, always positive and with an assured identity.
The former midfielder, who spent more than a decade working in the shadows of the Real Madrid youth set-up, and who reluctantly ended up taking the senior role, went on to create global history. Assured and aware that he was carrying an ideological torch, Del Bosque’s final pre-match address before Spain headed out to face the Dutch on that early July evening in 2010 was very much in character.
“I told them to think of themselves as the romantics of football facing the most important game of their lives,” he said. “I was appealing to the romanticism that I think a lot of us carry within us from childhood. “However much you professionalise football, however much money is involved, the important thing is to defend the nobility of football.”
Perhaps somewhat miscast as a kindly father-figure – he made some forceful moves in South Africa, including the semi-final axing of Fernando Torres – Del Bosque admitted years later in an interview with Spanish outlet Marca that he had spent little time dwelling on the past.
“I’ve only watched the game once, during lockdown,” he said. “I watched all the 2010 World Cup, what did I think? That we did some things well. It is not a joke, I always say we were very lucky, but that doesn’t take anything away because we had great players that played well, very well.”
Speaking at a civic reception shortly after returning from South Africa, Del Bosque described himself as a “Salamancan without borders.” Curiously, his hometown boasts the highest percentage of retirees anywhere in Spain and back in 2010 he was just six years shy of being legally able to join those ranks, but there seems to be no slowing down for ‘El Bigoton’.
Eight years since he last strode a touchline, Del Bosque remains active in the game, both through an academy that bears his name and a newly-created role to help oversee the sport in Spain. The famous moustache is still present, there’s been little recent aggravation to his Calle Toro statue, and he remains as the oldest man to have coached a World Cup-winning side.
