After years of trying to find the formula to get the Spanish football team to take to the field in Catalonia, football federation head Luis Rubiales has got the headline he was looking for: Spain is to play a football game in Catalonia again! It will, however, be a friendly match and will be played at the Espanyol club stadium at Cornellà-El Prat. The desire among a certain sector has always been to make the match official and to hold it at the Camp Nou, an idea that has always been ruled out in the past, and continues to progress no further than being the (wet) dream of a small minority.
As reported on Monday by the newspaper Marca, Luis Enrique's Spain will face Albania on March 26th at the RCD Espanyol Stadium, which will be the return of the la roja to Catalonia 18 years after their last match, a friendly against Peru at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, played on February 18th, 2004, in which the team then coached by Iñaki Sáez won 2-1 with goals from Baraja and Etxeberria. The match was preparatory for the Euro 2004 which was played in Portugal and which Greece ended up winning.
Luis Rubiales, President of the RFEF / Europa Press
March 26th, against Albania
Luis Rubiales's Spanish football federation (RFEF) claims that Spain's return to Catalonia in March will be the first step to getting la roja to play an official match, something that has not happened since October 12th, 1975, when Spain faced Denmark at Sarrià - the old Espanyol club stadium - a duel which the Spanish team won 2-0 with goals from Pirri and Capó.
The desire of Rubiales seems far from being fleshed out, as it would be an unnecessary way of generating controversy, and the president of the RFEF himself is aware that fuelling such a debate would be detrimental, in the first place, to Luis Enrique's team itself. The coach, in fact, is the first to seek to avoid making unnecessary noise or allowing his team to be used politically.
Luis Enrique, in a training session of the Spanish 'selection'./ EFE
Last official match of (under-23) Spain at Camp Nou: the '92 Olympics
To find the last time there was an official match of a Spanish national team in Barcelona - although in this case it was the under-23 team - it is necessary to time-travel back almost 30 years, to the Olympic Games of Barcelona in 1992, when Spain won gold medal over Poland in the Camp Nou Olympic final, 3-2.
Meanwhile, it has also transpired that after the Spain-Albania at Cornellà-El Prat, the team led by Luis Enrique will play another friendly, on March 29 and against Iceland, a match that will be played at Riazor, the home of Deportivo de La Coruña. Both matches are part of Spain's preparation for this year's World Cup, to be held in November in Qatar, for which Luis Enrique's team has high hopes.
Main image: Luis Enrique Martínez, coach of the Spanish football team, at a press conference / EFE