Vicente Del Bosque, the Spanish manager, has flabbergasted the fans by naming a remarkably inexperienced player in the form of Munir-El-Haddadi in his Euro Cup qualifier team.
La Roja are all set to kick off their Euro qualifying journey next week. Their first match is against Macedonia the day after tomorrow.
There was expected to be a surprising name or two in the squad that was to be announced by Del Bosque, but, for him to pick El-Haddadi who has the experience of just a couple of club matches at the senior level, it’s extraordinary.
El-Haddadi, who is just 19 years of age, is a forward who is born and has been brought up in Spain.
He is a Barcelona academy student and had featured in a handful of games for their junior team the previous season.
He is quite low on experience count at the moment, extremely low one should say.
However, in the media, it is being rumoured that there might be a non-playing reason behind the selection of El-Haddadi.
According to a Spanish newspaper, El-Haddadi’s roots are from Morocco. His mom and dad are from there and thus, the player was eligible to represent Morocco.
The Morocco officials, reportedly, were also interested in getting El-Haddadi recruited to play for them. In order to avoid that situation actually, Del Bosque and the Spanish association might have decided to give the youngster a call up and make him make his debut for La Roja.
In the meantime, Del Bosque has also confirmed who would be starting between the sticks for Spain in that Macedonia game. He made it clear that it’s Iker Casillas again who would be his man for that encounter despite the poor form of the Real Madrid veteran in the World Cup.