Two men will stand a few metres apart in the technical areas at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, and not so long ago one of them was sitting in the other's classroom. Spain and Argentina meet in the World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the subplot the neutrals have seized on is not Messi or a golden generation. It is a coaching course.
Spain reached the final by beating France 2-0 in the first semi-final. Argentina saw off England 2-1 in the second. That much is settled. What lingers is where the two managers first crossed paths: a lecture room, not a touchline.
The Las Rozas connection
In November 2017, at the RFEF's Ciudad del Futbol in Las Rozas, Lionel Scaloni sat the UEFA Pro Licence course, the qualification a coach needs to work at the top level. One of his instructors was Luis de la Fuente. Nothing more dramatic than that: a tutor at the front, a freshly retired player taking notes.
De la Fuente, per CBS Sports, remembers it warmly. "I had the luck to train Lionel Scaloni among them," he said of his students, before adding, simply, "He's a world champion." Scaloni has been just as generous. "Luis has been a huge help to those of us who did the coaching course in Las Rozas," he told reporters, per Reuters, and called his former professor "a great bloke".
That is where the ties end and the caution begins. De la Fuente was never Scaloni's club coach or personal mentor. He was one voice at the front of a room, on record about a course he taught, no more and no less. The rest is respect, freely given.
A classroom that shaped a generation
The striking part is who else passed through those courses. Xavi Hernandez sat them. So did Xabi Alonso, Raul and Andoni Iraola, per Tribuna. A quiet Spanish production line for managers, ticking over while nobody much outside the game noticed, and Scaloni took the lessons home.
He built a dynasty with them. Argentina arrive in New Jersey as the reigning world champions, winners in 2022, chasing a fourth star and something no men's side has managed in more than sixty years: back-to-back World Cups. Brazil were the last to do it, in 1958 and 1962, with only Italy before them, in 1934 and 1938, per FIFA. Everyone who has tried to retain the trophy since has come up short.
Spain are chasing rarer air of their own. One World Cup, in 2010, is all they have, and de la Fuente could double that tally against the very man he once helped through a qualification.
Respect, not rivalry
There is no needle here, no touchline feud to rake over. Both men have spoken about the other with something close to affection, and the framing that fits Sunday is gratitude rather than grudge. One took Spain's coaching badges and stayed; the other carried the same ideas across the Atlantic and won a World Cup with them.
The final kicks off on Sunday 19 July at MetLife Stadium. Before it, France and England contest the third-place match in Miami on Saturday 18 July. Then the classroom reopens, a World Cup on the line this time, and one of the two men will walk out of it having taught the other a final lesson. Which way it falls, nobody yet knows.
Sources
- CBS Sports
- Reuters (via KFGO)
- Tribuna
- FIFA
- Cover photo: Voltmetro / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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