. Spain head coach Luis de la Fuente says he will not give a single player a special responsibility to stop Argentina captain Lionel Messi in the final of the 2026 World Cup. <\/p>\n
At a press conference ahead of Sunday’<\/p>\n
s title clash with Argentina at MetLife Stadium in New York, De La Fuente said the “man-marking” strategy against Messi has failed in the past. <\/p>\n
The Spanish coach recalled the first time he saw Messi playing as a youngster.<\/p>\n
He recalled that his team had a special plan to stop Messi in the Copa del Rey match between Sevilla and Barcelona years ago. <\/p>\n
“I met Lionel Messi when I was playing youth football. It was a Copa del Rey match between Sevilla and Barcelona. We’ve heard a lot about Messi,” De La Fuente said. “Initially, we decided to mark him as a man. The match ended in a goalless draw until the 70th minute. When the player who was stopping him got a card, I changed him. Messi scored four goals in the next 15 minutes. “<\/p>\n
De La Fuente said the World Cup final will be a big focus on Messi, but the plan is not to stop it with just one player. “Are we going to man-mark him? Nope. But will we pay more attention to him? Yes. But they’re going to pay the same attention to our players,” he said. <\/p>\n
The Spanish coach praised Argentina and coach Lionel Scaloni and said he had his respect for them.<\/p>\n
“Praise, praise and even more praise,” he said of Argentina. He said Scaloni was a good friend of his. <\/p>\n
De La Fuente urged Spain’s young star Lamin Yamal not to be compared to Messi and said Yamal should be allowed to develop in his own style.<\/p>\n
“Lamin, Yamal, Yamal. Messi is an unbelievable talent and an example for all young players. But Lamin has to make his own identity,” he said. <\/p>\n
Spain is in excellent form at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
The team has conceded just one goal in the tournament so far and became the first team in the history of the men’s World Cup to have 6 clean sheets in a single World Cup. Spain beat Austria, Portugal, Belgium and France to reach the World Cup final for the first time since 2010. <\/p>\n
Spain are unbeaten in 37 games in a row and beat Argentina on Sunday to set a new record for the European men’s national team’s longest unbeaten streak. Argentina are looking for their second successive World Cup title.<\/p>\n
Argentina defeated England 2-1 in the semi-finals to win their last 14 matches in a row. The team set a new record by scoring eight goals in the 85th minute. <\/p>\n
The latest head-to-head history between Argentina and Spain is drawn. Both teams have won 6-6 and two matches have been drawn. Therefore, the World Cup final between European champions Spain and Copa America champions Argentina is expected to be very exciting. ANI<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
. Spain head coach Luis de la Fuente says he will not give a single player a special responsibility to stop Argentina captain Lionel Messi in the final of the 2026 World Cup. At a press conference ahead of Sunday’ s title clash with Argentina at MetLife Stadium in New York, De La Fuente saidContinue reading “Spain’s strategy of not ‘man marking’ to stop Messi”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":77322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-samachar-en"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo_0c419efe.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77326,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77325\/revisions\/77326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media\/77322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}