Their mums would be proud of them

Football largely passes me by. (So much so, that a few weeks ago I placed Malaga CF in a wrong, lower division of the Spanish league on the front page of this newspaper moments before print deadline - wiser souls corrected me in time before it was my last day in the office).

But this Sunday I'll be there (in front of the TV), routing for Spain of course. As a fairweather fan, who only really follows news of the Spanish team out of the corner of an eye on the nightly sports reports, one thing often struck me - both back in 2010 and now 2026. The team are a really nice bunch of blokes. Not a very technical appraisal, I know, but one I think that matters. I was chuffed the football pundits across Europe made broadly the same point after the France game.

The keyword is team. That sense that everyone is working together as equals for common enjoyment, getting pleasure out of the process as they go, unhurried, no individual trying to outshine the other; tall poppies are not welcome here.

The pundits and less successful World Cup teams will analyse this all night. But those of us who live and work in Spain see this every day. It is no secret. Watch Spanish young people studying, playing, working together in a team and you can see it all the time.

In teamwork throughout Spanish life, there is no barely hidden jostling for position to be the best of the group, little cutting criticism of others nor a sense that all means count to achieve a goal. What counts here is being together and savouring that time; the journey is king and not the destination.

You can see it in the way everyone mucks in at a party to help the host, unasked; or on a night out, how it starts when the slowest (not the quickest) in the group is ready to set off and only ends when the last person is ready to call it a day. Not to mention the passionate precision of Semana Santa processions.

This can have its downsides as well. To untrained, foreign eyes, often a job can take longer to finish or it might be unclear what it is trying to achieve. That piece of paper needed from the council can wend its way happily over several floors of the town hall for weeks before finally emerging.

But, at the end of the day, that focus on enjoying the now and unconditional support for others is why so many of us love Spain.

Good luck on Sunday.