Why Koke’s central role has been crucial to Spain’s Euro 2020 progress and plans

Spain’s starting 11 at Euro 2020 has frequently drawn questions, raised eyebrows or outright bemusement - if it doesn’t edge into annoyance or beyond - in some quarters.

It is, all things considered, a team at the beginning of a cycle and clearly preparing for future tournaments, but also trying to use the best components available to them right now - but not as most people expected.

Manchester City’s Rodri has been peripheral since his opening game appearance, with Sergio Busquets then sidelined. Liverpool’s Thiago Alcantara has barely had a look-in. Alvaro Morata starts without regularly scoring. The triangle at the back of goalkeeper and two centre-backs had fewer than ten caps apiece at the start of the tournament, giving no chance for familiarity or for partnerships to be developed.

Contrast that to semi-final opponents Italy, who seem to have been calling on Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini in one system or another for the best part of three hundred years, and it’s clear just how different the preparations have been - Aymeric Laporte wasn’t even ‘Spanish’ until a couple of weeks before the tournament started. Meanwhile, head coach Luis Enrique has chopped and changed those at the back and those on the sides of the Spain attack...but the midfield has remained largely constant: Busquets at the base once he returned, with Barcelona starlet Pedri and Atletico Madrid captain Koke ahead of him.

The former’s selection is clearly based on future hopes as much as current talent. Koke’s selection has had people questioning his ongoing involvement, even despite winning LaLiga this season, but the truth is he has played a very different role for La Roja - and a very important one from a tactical perspective.

This isn’t to overlook the natural traits he brings to the team from club level. Enrique has been vocal about wanting to play with more fire, intensity, energy; wanting to win the ball back more quickly and be capable of passing more directly into the final third at times. Koke does all of this, and well, for club and country.

But there is more besides. While with Atletico he is switched between a central position and, still, that in-from-out role as a wider midfielder tasked with narrowing the pitch and blocking the passing lanes, for Spain he is much more unleashed: required to get forward, asked to break the lines not just with incisive balls into feet but with his own movement, into the penalty area and even beyond the No9.

Now with 55 caps to his name at age 29, Koke has still yet to score for the national team at senior level (and only once surpassed six in a season for Atleti). But it isn’t for want of trying, or opportunity, at the European Championship.

At least twice now he should have opened his account, the best of which was a side-footed effort over the bar from 14 yards or so in the opener against Sweden. Each of his big chances came from the same ploy: a late surge into the box, timing his run perfectly to get on the end of cut-backs or low passes to threaten, sort of, the opposition goal.

Beyond his below-par finishing, his final-third productivity is vital for Spain, so often good in circulating the ball but without the right pace to their game or final pass to really open up the opposition.

It was his delivery from the right channel for Olmo’s header for the first big chance against Sweden. It was Koke who won the penalty - missed by Morata - against Slovakia. And it has been Koke’s succession of corners which have led to chances, half-chances and goals.

That combination of bringing a far more adventurous attack-minded game to the team than he is allowed to show with Atletico, plus his trademark ‘fighting’ spirit and commitment to the team cause, makes him the ideal third man in that Spain midfield. They don’t have another real runner from deep who can also dictate the team’s on-the-ball approach and who also has the lung-capacity to do all jobs, both halves of the pitch, both halves of the game.

This is a more enjoyable Koke. A more expansive Koke. A Koke which could-have-been, had he had other managers than Diego Simeone at club level, or had that Atleti team really evolved into a different beast. It isn’t to disparage that side’s achievements - they just won the league after all - but simply to realise that a young Koke could have been moulded into any type of midfielder according to his manager’s wishes. He has the complete package, technically and mentally.

Now he faces his biggest test at the tournament.

If Spain’s midfield has been the constant of their run at the Euros, so too has Italy’s been. For Busquets’ return read Marco Verratti, but it is effectively a triumvirate which was intended and has succeeded. The Italian is likely to be the one who goes head-to-head with Koke on that channel in midfield, and few would bet against one or both of these brilliant, combative pair ending up with a yellow card...or playing the decisive pass to settle the game.

They each have their tactical roles to fulfil, but it’s Koke who is perhaps playing the most crucial of all for his own national team.