Rodri Hernández stopped, which was when Spain started again. “Sometimes,” the Manchester City midfielder said, “20 or 30 seconds of saying to people ‘Calm down’ is more productive than going on the attack” – and this was one of those times.
The selección were half an hour into their last-16 tie with Georgia and they had taken nine shots to their opponents none but to everyone’s shock, especially their own, they were losing through a Robin Le Normand own goal. Worse, they were losing control.
It was time to stop looking for the goal they needed, time to just stop. And so, when the ball came to Rodri in the middle of midfield, that was exactly what he did. Which meant that for a moment, so did they. Stop, look, listen. Think. Come together, in Rodri’s words. “At that moment I thought that was what I had to do,” he said. “It was a little bit mad; 10 minutes where we lost control.”
Spain began again and then on 39 minutes, Rodri scored the equaliser. Three more followed, a 4-1 win carrying them into the quarter-final. “If we had reached the second half [behind], it would have been complicated; that [first goal] gave us tranquility,” he said.
He had, which is why it was only 10 minutes. It was like they had been hammering away at that Ikea wardrobe, sweating and swearing, wondering why the drawer did not fit and where that screw is supposed to go, and he had shown up and calmly turned the instructions the right way round. There is a time for everything and no one who understands time seems to control it like Rodri does. Homer and Bart Simpson comes to mind here, as they do just about everywhere: “There’s three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way! Isn’t that the wrong way? Yeah, but faster.”
“There are moments when the game needs more calm, more control,” the Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente, said. “There was a certain nervousness but we recovered our calm and our play and we saw a team that trusted in what it was doing. At half-time we talked about tranquillity, zero anxiety, and the players understood that. Then we have Rodri, who is a perfect computer, who administers everything, the emotions, all the moments in a magisterial way; that’s a great help for everyone.”
Rodri grasps that. “I’d always enjoyed watching football and it’s true I found it easy to understand, to read the game; when a team was successful, I could see why,” he said.
Sometimes it is better not to do things in such a hurry, where clarity beats acceleration. Where you have to pause, work it all out, simplify it. He is proof of that on the pitch, where he always seems to be on the ball, having more touches than anyone else here, but never keeps it; where he is everywhere without every seeming to move anywhere.
He is proof of that off the pitch too. Never mind looking for a line, when he walks into a press room just shut up and listen. Let him talk, learn. Ask and he will answer clearly and analytically. It is easy to see the ascendancy in him, the leadership worn lightly, an authority exercised not imposed, built around the game itself, the play.
“I hit it and luckily it went in,” he said of his goal, sure, but he also said this: “We knew that the way they would defend, narrow in the area, with the forwards not coming back but waiting for counters, would mean that there would be an empty space along the front of the area for the midfielder, specifically the No 6, me.
“It’s easier to score with forwards but when it’s congested, we knew the space would be there. It was a good ball from Nico [Williams] and I thought that if I control with my right I am going to lose time so that’s why I changed my leg to my left, across the goal … Fortunately, the goal gets in and it was a good moment for the team. You need a cool head.”
Late on Sunday night Rodri spoke about how this had been a different type of game, “an exercise in insistence and patience”, in which the only thing he could recriminate his team for were the moments of doubt where they lost easy balls and their heads a little bit. As soon as he started to say it he stopped himself; the analysis was right but not the word; he was not here to recriminate, but to guide. And this would be good for them.
All they needed to do was stop to see it. “Despite a complicated moment, I think it’s positive we started losing,” he said. “If things always go easy, you don’t learn as much. And we sorted it out. It’s not easy: look at England. And apart from those moments, I think we interpreted the rest of the game well. Germany will be strong but we have no fear: we have our weapons too.
“We will go with personality and ambition; we’re here to win, we’re not here to play well or leave a good impression. We’re here to win, with everything we have got.”
