Spain named a 26-man World Cup squad in Madrid on Monday and left out every Real Madrid player, a first in the country’s 17 World Cup participations since 1934. Luis de la Fuente’s group now goes to the tournament without a single Madrid representative, a break from the club’s long habit of supplying Spain’s biggest stages.
The timing matters because the squad was finalised with the summer tournament approaching and because readers wanted to see how many Madrid players would make the cut. None did. Spain leaned instead on eight players from Barcelona and called on talent from Atletico Madrid, Athletic Club, Real Sociedad, Celta Vigo and Osasuna, along with names based at Arsenal, Manchester City, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayer Leverkusen.
Dean Huijsen came closest to forcing his way in. The 21-year-old moved to Madrid for £50million ($67.5m) last summer and had once looked set to lock down a Spain starting place while still at Bournemouth, but shaky form at club level left him on the outside as Pau Cubarsi and Marc Pubill were preferred. It was a sharp turn for a player who had been viewed as part of a possible younger Spanish core at Madrid.
He was not the only one caught by the squeeze. Dani Carvajal, who won the European Championship with Spain in Germany in 2024 as vice-captain, was not even in De la Fuente’s 55-man provisional squad, while Fran Garcia, Raul Asencio and Alvaro Carreras also failed to turn club status into a place in the final group. Carreras arrived from Benfica for €50million (£43m; $58.2m) in July, underlining how little transfer value alone counted in the final call.
That left Madrid’s presence reduced to a footnote in a squad announcement that says as much about Spain’s changing selection picture as it does about the players omitted. Gonzalo Garcia will still travel as a supplementary player for training before the warm-up friendly against Iraq on June 4, but even that is a temporary role. For Madrid, and for Huijsen in particular, the more important question is whether this is a one-off selection shock or the start of a longer shift away from the club’s grip on Spain’s biggest tournament teams.
