By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-06-11 06:58:19 | Updated at 2026-06-11 21:07:10
14 hours ago
Even the most lenient critic could concede that Spain’s performance at the 2022 World Cup was disappointing. A squad of such talent, led by a coach of Luis Enrique’s class, won just one of four games and were eliminated by Morocco in the first knockout round.
It was a tournament in which La Roja had almost complete ownership of the ball, yet found few solutions relative to that dominance. Though the record books state that they scored nine goals in four games, seven of them came in a win over Costa Rica in their opener – after that, they scored two goals in three games, despite averaging an astronomical 75% possession over those outings.
Spain, as is almost always the case, had great midfielders in 2022. They still guided plenty of play into their attackers, with Pedri and Rodri ranking first and third for most passes into the final third per 90 in that edition of the tournament. Over the course of that tournament, they had a field tilt of 83.5%, showing just how much of their games took place in the attacking third of the pitch.
But all too often, Spain couldn’t work meaningful openings after that midfield-forward connection had been made, the explanations for which are manifold.
One of those was the fact that Luis Enrique took just one recognised number nine: Álvaro Morata. Then, he opted to start Marco Asensio – a non-striker – at the head of the team in three of their four matches, including in their elimination against Morocco. Of course, Spain had won a major tournament playing without a striker a decade earlier at Euro 2012, but in Qatar, they enjoyed few of the pros of the approach and suffered from most of the cons. They were predictable, unable to threaten in behind, and short on dribbling ability in wide areas.
Although many critics in Spain were quick to place the blame on Luis Enrique, it was clear that La Roja’s final-third struggles weren’t entirely a coaching problem.
Fortunately for current boss Luis de la Fuente, those ailments have since gone away. The emergence of Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams in recent years has electrified their attack. The pair have already spearheaded major-tournament success for Spain, doing so in the only one they have played in together, at Euro 2024. Yamal was named Best Young Player and Williams was named man of the match in the final, crystalising them as the defining players on the tournament’s best team.
And now there’s Mikel Oyarzabal; the middleman to Spain’s flying wingers and unlikely solution to Spain’s number nine issues, who is helping them look even sharper since dominating in Germany.
La Real’s Captain is in His Prime
Outside of Spain, Oyarzabal’s profile pales in comparison to the nation’s other stars. And yet, this summer, there will be few players pencilled into De la Fuente’s starting XI quicker than him; a 29-year-old who has never been to a World Cup before.
Even his detractors – Spain being a nation which is passionately opinionated on its footballers – cannot argue with his production at this point. After being used sparingly at international level between 2016 and 2022, Oyarzabal’s record while playing under De la Fuente is spectacular, posting 27 goal involvements in 32 appearances to date (19 goals, eight assists).
Sounds good in isolation, yet factor in his minutes played for more precision and stack him up against his peers, and we get something closer to exceptional.
Looking at all European players with 900+ minutes played at international level since Oyarzabal’s first game under De la Fuente (25 March 2023), his per-90 average for combined goals and assists (1.46) is the second highest in that time, only behind Erling Haaland (1.55).
Although his record under the current regime is outstanding in itself, the positive news on the eve of this World Cup is that Oyarzabal has hit the best form of his career since their Euro 2024 triumph. Morata was still Spain’s starting striker in that last major tournament but won’t go to the 2026 World Cup at all, with Oyarzabal, who only started one game in Germany, having fired himself right to the top of their striking hierarchy since.
Going into Spain’s tournament opener, he has been directly involved in 19 goals in his last 13 international appearances (13 goals, six assists). That’s more than every other European player in the same period bar – you guessed it – Haaland (22 in 12 games). And in this run of form, Oyarzabal is also on a remarkable streak of 12 consecutive starts with a goal or assist for Spain. The last time he started for his country and didn’t score or set up a goal was in October 2024.
Oyarzabal Can be Spain’s Finisher or Their Extra Midfielder
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Oyarzabal’s production is that his game doesn’t belong solely to the penalty area. Depending on the opponent and game plan, you’re as likely to see him playing as their ‘fourth midfielder’ as you are jockeying with centre-backs.
It is one of the reasons why De la Fuente has previously singled him out for his intelligence, in a squad where football IQ is already abundant.
With Oyarzabal as their striker, Spain have simply become more difficult to read for opponents. On one hand, he is a striker with over 150 career goals to his name; on the other, he can connect play with the quality of an attacking midfielder.
Now 29 years of age, his appreciation for when to move between those different roles is as effective as it has ever been: when to drop deep and pull centre-backs out of positions; when to make that sprint beyond the last line; when to not move at all and pin defenders. He has both the ability to involve himself in build-up play, and the understanding – as well as humility – to know when staying out of the way is what best serves the team. That presents a permanent dilemma for opposition centre-backs, who can never be sure what his next movement is going to be.
Here is Spain’s pass network map from the 2025 Nations League final – a game in which Oyarzabal was on the scoresheet from a finely-timed run between Portugal’s centre-backs to finish in the box.
The Real Sociedad man was right on time with that classic number-nine run. But for large swathes of the game, the problem for Portugal was that Oyarzabal was moving away from them in the other direction. By full-time, the average position of his touches was deeper than that of Pedri and Fabián Ruiz, and almost as deep as holding midfielder Martín Zubimendi.
Did De la Fuente want his striker intervening so deep? Ideally, no. The Portugal game was one of the more extreme ‘fourth midfielder’ examples we’ve seen. However, it showed the spectrum of Oyarzabal’s influence and how, along with fleet-footed wingers and midfield rotations, it can be used to break the opponent’s defensive shape (typically the hardest thing to achieve in international football).
Prior to Oyarzabal’s own finish, when he ran off Portugal’s centre-backs into the penalty area, his side opened the scoring by finding him dropping into his own half.
Here, Spain shift the ball around the back while Oyarzabal waits up front.
As the ball gets to the right side, Yamal makes a run in behind and forces Portugal’s defensive line to drop. Meanwhile, Oyarzabal starts to creep the other way.
Then Oyarzabal makes a swift dart into his own half, with Gonçalo Inácio already scrambling to make the distance back up to him.
Oyarzabal, knowing Inácio was sprinting to try to prevent him from turning, flicks it immediately to Zubimendi, who has made a smart third-man run:
Zubimendi is then free to drive at Portugal’s defence with one of the centre-backs out of position, and Yamal and Williams as options to either side.
Shortly after playing wide to Yamal, Zubimendi is tapping home inside the six-yard box.
For Oyarzabal, the power of such moments is that their success feeds his unpredictability. Each time he drops into midfield, the defenders become more likely to overreact the next time he does so. Maybe that creates gaps for the likes of Yamal or Williams to work with; maybe he himself earns an extra yard when he later looks to run in behind. The key is that Oyarzabal is neither wedded to being a fixed number nine nor the ‘false nine’ of yesteryear, but continually leveraging both threats.
As it happens, many of the games in which Oyarzabal has been hardest to detect have also been ones where he’s found the net himself. Against Serbia in March, he produced one of his finest performances for the national team, pairing a stylish brace with more smart interventions in central pockets.
Just from the two screenshots below, we can see how Serbia’s back line was contorted and pulled apart by Spain’s attacking movements.
After that 3-0 victory against Serbia, De la Fuente had this to say about his striker:
“When I’m asked: ‘which player can be a great coach in the future?’ [It’s] Mikel Oyarzabal. He understands football very well, he interprets every movement well, [even] in difficult situations. And especially in the creative aspect… he has an innate talent to play between the lines; he makes great runs. We struggle to appreciate what we have. He’s world class.”
It’s perhaps worth reiterating at this point that this is a player with more than 150 career goals to his name. Indeed, the irony of the midfield moonlighting we have been analysing is that, domestically, Spanish football fans have largely regarded him as a forward who comes up with big goals in big moments; the type who can be ineffectual for long stretches and then suddenly flip a game on its head.
And ahead of his first World Cup, there is certainly weight behind that perception. For club and country combined, Oyarzabal has played in 17 semi-finals or finals in his career and has 16 goal involvements in those games (12 goals, five assists), as well as scoring in all five finals he has played in. England fans won’t need reminding that it was he, after a relatively uneventful Euro 2024 up that point, who came off the bench to score the winner two summers ago.
That it was Oyarzabal who scored the winning goal of that tournament was, in some ways, not all that surprising. Once he popped up next to De la Fuente on television screens across Spain, many in the country would have thought to themselves that he was just the type of player who could steal the game for them. Largely unheralded by the masses, yes, but acknowledged to have that something worth throwing into the game at that stage.
At the 2026 World Cup, Oyarzabal will no longer be the player Spain are throwing on to see what will happen. He will be the centrepiece of an attack expected to be in contention for the trophy.
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