Spain are the dominant force in men’s world football right now, and the numbers back it up. World champions. European champions. Olympic champions. Undefeated in two and a half years. Of the past 10 major international tournaments, Spain have won five.
Spain enter Saturday’s Nations League fixture against England at Wembley (19:45 BST) with an international unbeaten streak of 38 matches. The run began after a 1-0 loss to Colombia in a 2024 friendly, and it has held since then. The record is not limited to the senior men’s team either; during this period, Spain have also secured victories across other competitions.
- Six Under-19 European Championships
- Three Under-21 European Championships
- The Women’s World Cup in 2023
Since 2009, Spanish clubs have claimed half of all Champions League and Europa League titles handed out.
The Three Pillars
A Spain football expert named Guillem Balague spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live about why Spain has become so successful at football, and he said there are “three pillars” reasons behind the country’s coaching culture.
“The first one was university, and in particular something called the National Institute of Physical Education,” he said. “University entered physical education in Spain a long time ago, in the 1990s, and they created physical coaches and football coaches with a deep understanding of learning and training processes.”
The following is a passage that has been lifted from its original context and set apart for examination. It is a quotation, and it stands alone here, marked by brackets, as “Some of those fitness coaches became really big managers, like Rafa Benitez or Marcelino Garcia Toral. They came from learning and studying what football was about ahead of anybody else.”.
Historically, the Basque Country stands as a distinct touchstone within Spanish football, tied to work ethic, immense daily effort, and constant labor.
“And the third pillar is what everybody knows: the Barcelona influence, Johan Cruyff and the tactical revolution that followed through him.”
Barcelona’s La Masia Legacy
Eight players from Barcelona’s La Masia academy were in the Spain squad who won the 2010 World Cup under Vicente del Bosque. Another eight were in Luis de la Fuente’s group as they lifted the trophy again this summer.
Cruyff led Barcelona to their first European Cup win in 1992, using total football, a system developed by the Dutch national side during the 1970s when he was a player. That approach was later copied at the Nou Camp under Pep Guardiola’s leadership between 2008 and 2012.
During that stretch, Barcelona secured three successive La Liga championships, and Spain captured back-to-back European Championship victories in 2008 and 2012, with their 2010 World Cup win falling between those two tournaments.
A system built on the art of ball possession and positional play in its purest form is where Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets were brought through.
From 2009 to 2011, and then again from 2016 to 2020, Jordi Gratacos served as Barcelona’s international director of academies. He spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live about it, saying: “The number one thing is to understand the tactical meaning of the technical action. What I mean is to create intelligent players [who are] very good in technical aspects.”.
“In this level, all players are very good in the technical aspects. The most important are these players who always decide the best option inside the field and make others better.”
The passage opens with a reference to “The main objective is to prepare the players to take the position. It’s an open education when you create some scenarios, context and ecosystem where the player needs to decide, and the coach needs also to say: ‘This was the best option – next time, take the other option.'”, which is a quotation that has been extracted from the original text. The remaining sentences are composed of figures and quoted material that have also been removed.
“The most important thing is that they need to decide inside the game.”
Flick’s early years at Barcelona mirror what Guardiola achieved: two straight La Liga titles with the club, with a third now within reach. The comparison holds beyond just those trophies, as his first two seasons as manager repeat what Guardiola did.
Academy products form the engine of his project, with Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo and Pau Cubarsi forming key components of success at both club and international level — just as the generation of 2008-12 did.
The recipe for sustained triumph has been discovered by Spain, with Barcelona positioned at its core.
The Basque Character
Five members of the 2026 World Cup squad came from Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad, and eight of the Spanish team were playing for those clubs when Spain won Euro 2024. Those two teams produce players who embody what Spain need at the top level.
Mikel Merino also stands out, having struck a quarter-final winner against Germany at Euro 2024, followed by six goals in six games during World Cup qualifying, with two late winners coming against Portugal and Belgium over the summer.
Merino hails from Pamplona, which lies within Navarre, an autonomous community where Spanish and Basque cultural influences blend together with notable force.
The village of Zizur Mayor sits just five kilometres from Pamplona, and it was there that former Chelsea captain and Spain international Cesar Azpilicueta spent his childhood.
When asked to describe Basque culture, Azpilicueta told BBC Radio 5 Live: “The discipline, the culture of working hard, of not giving up or being resilient, not very flashy.”
“Normally, people want to display this culture of fight, being tough – like English football – more duels, more physical, less technical.”
“But also in terms of tactical approach, more compact, great knowledge of knowing where to go, and with the ball keep it simple and try to go forward as quick as possible.”
Five members of the 2026 squad who come from the Basque region have played a significant role in Spain’s recent run of success, and they serve as proof of what Cruyff believed about players from that area.
Once Cruyff spoke thus: “The first thing I did as a coach, was to sign four players from the Basque region. They are not afraid of anything.”
For current Spain boss De la Fuente in 2026, Unai Simon played in goal, with former Manchester City defender Aymeric Laporte a key cornerstone of a defence that conceded just one goal in eight matches all tournament.
In the final against Argentina, Nico Williams set up the winner for Ferran Torres, while Martin Zubimendi came on as a substitute and had a positive effect on the game.
How Spain Keep Winning
What Spain have constructed is not a secret. The formula rests on three components:
- University-level sports education, which created coaches with deep training backgrounds
- The Basque work ethic, passed down through clubs like Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad
- Barcelona’s tactical legacy, carried forward through La Masia and generations of academy graduates
The pillars all support each other. The university system turned out coaches who had studied football closely, who later became managers themselves. These managers then built clubs that bore their stamp — Barcelona under Guardiola, Athletic Bilbao with its Basque identity.
The outcome is a national side that brings together the finest talent from across Spanish football. This explains why Spain hold the upper hand.
What Comes Next
The match between Spain and England at Wembley on Saturday pits two major rivals against each other. The foundations for success are present, with the academy system feeding talent into both clubs and the national team, while the national side continues to perform strongly.
Right now, Spain is the team to beat in men’s world football, and they are getting it right across the board.
Source material: “Education, Barcelona & Basque culture – why Spain are dominating football,” the BBC.
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