Spain coach Luis de la \u200cFuente has told Lamine Yamal to pack away the birthday candles and any nerves, saying the teenager’s grandest World Cup moment may come against France in Tuesday’s semi-final or on an even bigger stage. <\/p>\n
Lamine turned 19 on the eve of the meeting in Dallas and De la Fuente, who has long preached joy over jitters, said the forward should embrace rather than carry the occasion. <\/p>\n
“I’ve told him there is no need to worry \u2013 let him enjoy himself. I’m sure Lamine\u2019s great World Cup day is still to come. I hope it\u2019s tomorrow and, if not, then in the final, if we can get there,” De la Fuente told reporters. <\/p>\n
Lamine has gradually been finding form after entering the World \u200cCup nursing a \u200chamstring injury he suffered after converting a penalty for Barcelona \u200cin \u2060late April. He \u2060has scored one goal and failed to set up any at the tournament so far. <\/p>\n
Spain beat France 5-4 in last year’s Nations League semi-finals, but De la Fuente said the rematch would be another beast, particularly after the Spaniards almost let a 5-1 lead evaporate in the final 15 minutes. <\/p>\n
“We learn a lot from those matches, as they will have done,” he said. “We will try to repeat the scenarios where situations were favorable to us \u2060and not the others.” <\/p>\n
The Spain manager framed the contest as \u200ca clash of “antagonistic styles” and said his side must \u200cbe wary of France’s “very dangerous” transitions. <\/p>\n
Asked how Spain stop forwards Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele and \u200cMichael Olise, De la Fuente said there had been no shortage of homework. <\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve analyzed \u200cthem very, very thoroughly. They have players of exceptional caliber, but so do we. The key is to impose our own characteristics and style, and to neutralize the opposition. That\u2019s football. The more balanced side is usually closer to winning, although that\u2019s no guarantee,” he said. <\/p>\n
De la Fuente \u200csaid France were better than the side Spain beat in 2025, with both teams sharpened by time, and insisted he would \u2060not be drawn \u2060into France coach Didier Deschamps’ suggestion that Spain are favorites, dismissing the label as little more than pre-match confetti. <\/p>\n
“Being told you are favorites or not means nothing,” De la Fuente said. “We are both great teams, like in the other semi-final (England v Argentina). I don\u2019t understand why people say such things because whether we\u2019re the favorites or not is completely irrelevant.” <\/p>\n
De la Fuente, who described himself as “very romantic” and joked that he likes Spanish singer-songwriter Julio Iglesias, said his final message to the players would be to enjoy a moment that may not come around again. <\/p>\n
“I tell the players that we need to enjoy ourselves; we\u2019re in a situation that might never happen again. That we be ourselves, and that we be wary of the opposition\u2019s strengths. We absolutely must believe we want to go through. We\u2019ll give it our all to reach the final,” De la Fuente added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain coach Luis de la \u200cFuente has told Lamine Yamal to pack away the birthday candles and any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-540779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}