Luis de la Fuente has taken Spain into the World Cup final four in his first tournament as senior coach, extending an unbeaten run that has carried La Roja through five victories and one draw while conceding only one goal. The 65-year-old now has Spain one match from the final, with Francia next after the latest step in a campaign that has changed the tone around his team.
That is why his name is drawing attention now. De la Fuente is not arriving from a long club career in Spain's top division; his path to this moment ran through the Real Federación Española, where he joined the structure in 2013 and worked through the Sub-19, Sub-18, Sub-21 and Olympic teams before taking the senior job in December 2022. He has already turned that pathway into results, with Spain winning the Nations League in June 2023 and Eurocopa 2024.
Spain's World Cup form is more striking when set against the scale of the task. Under De la Fuente, the team has been almost impossible to open up, and the balance of results is enough to explain why the search interest around him has surged again: five wins, one draw, one goal against. He has done it with a group that includes Unai Simón, Mikel Merino, Dani Olmo and Pedri, players he knew from the Olympic side and now trusts on the biggest stage.
There is still a wrinkle in the story. De la Fuente's current success comes despite the fact that he had little experience as a club coach in Spain's top division, a gap that once would have been treated as a red flag for a senior national team appointment. Instead, Spain has leaned on a coach whose deepest work was done inside the federation, in youth football and development settings, and the result has been a team that looks settled rather than improvised.
What comes next is simple enough to measure and hard enough to do: beat Francia and reach the final, or stop here and leave the unbeaten run as a near-perfect tournament without the last step. For De la Fuente, who never played for the senior Spain team and spent much of his life around the game as a left back and then a coach, this World Cup has become the clearest proof yet that the long route through Spanish football can lead to its biggest stage.
