COLOGNE, Germany — Whether at Spain's Euro 2024 training camp at Der Öschberghof in the Black Forest or on the tram to one of its games in Germany, one player has emerged as the central figure: Marc Cucurella.
During the 1-0 group stage win over Italy in Gelsenkirchen, Spanish fan Juanma Romero and four friends sported wigs in admiration of the Chelsea left-back's trademark long hair. “The Cucurella Boys,” Romero wrote in an X alongside an image of them posing inside the Arena AufSchalke.
The boys from Cucurella pic.twitter.com/cKWhlRLfr7
— Juanma Romero (@Guardiolato) June 20, 2024
When Spain played its third and final game of the group stage against Albania, the wigs had multiplied. They were not only black anymore, but also red and yellow. A group of German fans had even adopted Cucurella's hair for the match and, at every opportunity, led the Spanish fans in “Cucu-rella” chants on the tram on the way to the Arena Düsseldorf.
The wigs and chants have been accompanied by memes and songs. One of them is simple: legendary Brazilian left-back Roberto Carlos with Cucurella's hair superimposed on his head. “We are the same in everything except the hair,” Cucurella joked this week in an interview with Spanish media.
The same themes have played out at Spain's base in southern Germany. Midfielder Mikel Merino said the memes have been spread through the players' WhatsApp group. “They're funny,” Cucurella added.
‼️ Cucurella reacts to his memes.
😂 “Roberto Carlos? We look alike in everything except our hair.” pic.twitter.com/6ic0TjY7RV
— El Chiringuito TV (@elchiringuitotv) June 23, 2024
There is also a TikTok song that has gone viral. The singer, Adri Navarro, has hair like Cucurella and sings about the Spanish side, in Spanish: “Cucu Cucu-rella, eat paella; Cucu Cucu-rella, drink Estrella; Erling Haaland trembles, when he sees Cucurella.”
Cucurella, who was playing minigolf with his teammates this week, lost a bet against Spain's captain, Álvaro Morata, and had to sing the song in front of his teammates, causing laughter in a base camp that was increasingly confident ahead of the round. from Spain. of 16 with Georgia on Sunday.
“If I made it, Morata would make the decision, and if not, I would,” Cucurella told COPE. “It wasn't a difficult putt and I'm lethal at minigolf, in a good way, so I thought it was easy, but I felt the pressure.”
However, behind the wigs, the memes, the songs and the missed putts, there is a player who is having a brilliant tournament against all odds in Germany, especially considering he was expected to play a backup role to Bayer Leverkusen's Alejandro Grimaldo , who was coming off a stellar undefeated season with the German team.
Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville, a commentator for ITV in England, said before the finals began that it seemed “something was missing” for Spain to go all the way and that “having Cucurella at left-back is probably one of examples of that.”
It is an opinion that has not aged well in this tournament, but would not have been uncommon before a ball had been kicked in Spain's first match against Croatia.
Cucurella, 25, has had an interesting career. Highly rated at Barcelona, he never reached the level at the Catalan club, where he made just one first-team appearance, with spells at Eibar and Getafe eventually taking him to the Premier League and Brighton & Hove Albion. He followed up a €65m move to Chelsea in 2022, after a single season at Brighton saw him break out, but things did not immediately click in London and the transfer fee has dogged him ever since.
“He's tenacious and aggressive, but that price tag still surprises everyone to this day,” Neville added.
Last summer, Cucurella was close to being loaned to Manchester United, but the deal fell through. In September, ESPN reported that Chelsea were open to offers for him to leave permanently in January. But in the end that never happened because he was injured.
So at the start of this year, a place in Spain’s Euro 2024 XI seemed impossible. Yet here he is; one of the revelations of the tournament so far. That all changed in March, when he returned from injury to regain his place in Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea side and finished the season by playing 90 minutes in 12 consecutive Premier League games.
Those performances earned him what was effectively a debut for Spain. His first technical appearance for the senior team came in June 2021, when the U21s were called up to replace the first team due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was not until March this year, in a friendly against Brazil, that he will feel like he made his true debut.
His third and fourth caps came in pre-tournament friendlies against Andorra and Northern Ireland. He was then called up for the first match of Euro 2024 against Croatia in Berlin, chosen ahead of Grimaldo.
There are doubts over whether Cucurella would have been in the squad had Valencia's Jose Luis Gaya and Barcelona's Alejandro Balde been fit, but his fate could also be Spain's. Cucurella is perhaps the best defensively of that quartet of options and, as Spain advanced with three clean sheets, he has justified his selection.
Against Croatia he made an excellent goal-line block, but it was against Italy where he really stood out. Cucurella completed 51/51 passes, won 10 duels, recovered seven balls and was not dribbled even once. He was the perfect complement to winger Nico Williams, who was able to wreak havoc in front of him on the left flank.
“He was magnificent in every aspect of his game,” said Spain coach Luis de la Fuente, who coached Cucurella at the 2021 Olympics and during his tenure as U-21 coach.
The newspaper AS described him as a “fabulous discovery” after his performance against Italy. Marca newspaper, in its player ratings, said he was “the perfect mix of Marcelo and Ferland Mendy.” Your rating of him out of 10? “10… 11 equal.” No notes.
“He is more defensive, he also played as a left-back at Chelsea,” Grimaldo, who finally came into the team for the final group game against Albania while Cucurella was rested, told a news conference this week. “I am more attacking. In the end, we are both left-backs but with different profiles. And we can help in different phases of the game depending on what the coach sees fit.”
“There is no rivalry, we are friends and it is a healthy competition. The position is well filled and whoever plays will help the team. We have the same objective.”
That goal is to win Euro 2024. After coming through the group stages with three wins and three clean sheets – the first time Spain have managed that at a major tournament – they face Georgia, the tournament’s lowest-ranked team, in Cologne this weekend. However, they finished on the same side of the draw as Germany, Portugal, France and Belgium, so tougher tasks lie ahead if they advance.
However, if Spain manages to go all the way, Cucurella is likely to remain the center of attention; After all, he has promised to dye his long hair red if Spain lifts the trophy for the fourth time in Berlin on July 14.
