This was supposed to be about football, about a high-level meeting between Spain and England at 7:45pm. Instead, the build-up has been dragged into a far more serious argument: what happens if racism rears its head again in Madrid, and who is supposed to deal with it.
Thomas Tuchel has not exactly hidden from the subject. He said England would not expect anything untoward to happen, but also suggested the players should be told about the protocol if there is a precedent. That is hardly a throwaway remark. It is a reminder that this is the first England match in Madrid since some of England’s black players were subjected to racist abuse at the Santiago Bernabéu in 2004.
A warning from the past that has not gone away
That 2004 match matters because football never really gets to file away incidents like that and move on. They linger. They shape how players, coaches and supporters think about major fixtures in the same city, at the same kind of venue, and under the same sort of pressure. This is not paranoia. It is memory, and memory in football has a habit of becoming protocol.
De la Fuente’s response was blunt in its own way. He said there is no racism in Spain. That is the sort of line that sounds neat until you remember why the question is being asked in the first place. Spain’s football federation were fined in March for discriminatory chants about Muslims during their game against Egypt, and this debate is taking place against that background as well as the public comments from La Liga players.
Football would rather talk about the game
England have a match to play, and Tuchel is right about one thing: the football still matters. He said beating Croatia so they could have this match was the first step, and Harry Kane called it “the perfect opportunity to prove ourselves.” That is the clean sporting narrative everyone would prefer. England and Spain are there to compete, not to revisit ugly history.
But the reason this row matters is precisely because it refuses to stay outside the stadium. Tuchel is effectively saying the players should be prepared, not panicked. De la Fuente is pushing back hard, as if acknowledgement itself is a problem. Neither stance removes the uncomfortable truth that a major international fixture in Madrid is being framed by the same old question: can everyone involved be trusted to make racism the issue, rather than the excuse?
For now, that is the story. Not just Spain v England as a football match, but Spain and England as another test of whether the sport is serious about its own anti-racism language. The game kicks off at 7:45pm. The argument has already started.
