On Sunday the will crown its winner, with reigning world and South American champions facing current European champions . It pits two coaches who share a connection that goes back nearly a decade when Luis de la Fuente of Spain was the instructor for Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni in coaching courses held by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) in 2017 for former elite players.
"It was like a school: the kids in the front of the class and the kids sitting in the back,” recalled De la Fuente in an interview with The Guardian. “Leo [Scaloni] was in the front row. It would be easy to say now that he stood out, but it’s true that there was something different about him. He had that restlessness, that way of challenging you – ‘I don’t see it that way’. He was always debating, arguing.”
De la Fuente was one of the instructors for the tactics course. Former Athletic Club player Pablo Orbaiz, who made more than 300 appearances with the Basque side and was member of the Spanish national team, still has his notes from De la Fuente’s classes. “He was a great professional, an exceptional person,” said Orbaiz. “He was happy, friendly, approachable, funny and had a lot of common sense.”
Orbaiz knew him previously from when De la Fuente won a La Liga title with Athletic in the 1980s as a player and then when he returned to Bilbao in 2005 as a coach of the youth and reserve teams.
“He was like one of us. He is a person who is the same with you on day one as on day 1,000, regardless of what he has achieved,” said Orbaiz. Carlos Gurpegui, another Athletic stalwart who took part in that same coaching course, said that De la Fuente always went out of his way for the group.
Both Orbaiz and Gurpegui say that De la Fuente’s classes were “a blast” and “a pleasure” because they were “very open” and nurtured a lot of discussion and debate. “It was a very enriching experience,” added Orbaiz.
At the time of the course, De la Fuente had already been working as coach of the Spain Under-17 team and had won the 2015 UEFA EURO Under-19 title with current La Roja stars Rodri, Mikel Merino and Unai Simon.
“He was like another team-mate. One of his strongest traits is team management. The relationship he had with us as students and that he has now with his footballers is special,” said Pier Luigi Cherubino, who played over 300 matches in Spanish football.
Orbaiz went on to say that Scaloni was also a “spectacular” person and a very “active and engaged student”. It was clear to all that the Argentinian was not taking the course just to have coaching as another option, such is the case with other ex-players.
“There were three or four players who you could tell were clearly set on becoming coaches, and they had a high level for it, and Leo was one of them,” said Gurpegui.
At that time, Scaloni was already working as an assistant under Jorge Sampaoli on the Argentinian national team and before then he had been an assistant coach with Sevilla, one of the clubs where De la Fuente had played and coached at youth level.
Orbaiz is also full of praise for Scaloni the player. “He really lived and breathed the matches. He was a player who possessed great ball movement. He was very intense and physically very strong. He forced you to go all out in every challenge. He was so competitive.”
His competitiveness was also on display during the football-tennis matches between the former players of Athletic Club (Gurpegui, Orbaiz and Andoni Iraola) and Deportivo de La Coruna (Scaloni, Juan Carlos Valeron and Manuel Pablo Garcia). “He had the same temperament as when he was a footballer. He’d get fired up and would protest everything, always yelling, 'Out! In! On the line!'”
The two Athletic old boys confess that the Deportivo team usually won. “Leo and Manuel Pablo were two very top players, but to be able to play with Valeron should not have counted. It’s cheating,” continued Orbaiz. “Those games were like a derby. If you lost you hung your head until you could reclaim the championship belt.”
Orbaiz also highlights De la Fuente’s evolution as a coach. “With Athletic’s reserve team, he had a team that was strong defensively and relied on second balls and long balls. But by the time we were on that course together, he had taken in more of the traditional Spanish style and the Barcelona model of ball control. His teams by then were already dominating.”
Gurpegui, Orbaiz and Cherubino all share the joy and excitement of seeing De la Fuente and Scaloni in this World Cup final. “They are the kind of people everyone is happy for when things go well for them,” said Orbaiz. “It’s wonderful that they continue being two such normal people despite everything that they are achieving.”
Nine years later, the teacher and the student will come face-to-face again, but this time without notebooks or desks. Instead, their classroom will be in the greatest setting of all.
Sources: FIFA Official
