Spain’s Defender Cucurella Keeps Promise With De la Fuente Tattoo

Spain (GNP): Spain defender Marc Cucurella has followed through on a promise made during the World Cup by getting a tattoo of head coach Luis de la Fuente, commemorating the team’s triumphant run to the title this year. Cucurella, who played every minute of Spain’s campaign, revealed the tattoo on social media, sharing images and video of the design being inked, a portrait of De la Fuente holding the World Cup trophy alongside the number 26, marking the year of the win.

The defender captioned the post simply by confirming the promise had been kept, a reference to comments he had made earlier in the tournament pledging to permanently mark the achievement if Spain lifted the trophy. Speaking after the final, De la Fuente addressed the pledge himself, joking that he had already asked the players whether they had made a mistake in committing to it, adding with humour that while he was not so unattractive that the tattoo would need to be hidden, he was proud that his players had kept their word.

Cucurella’s gesture comes on the back of a personally significant World Cup for the player, who joined Real Madrid from Chelsea for £52 million in June and went on to feature in every minute of Spain’s title run. Away from the tattoo, Cucurella had also carried his wife’s pyjama top with him throughout the tournament as a personal good luck charm, and has spoken previously about keeping his signature long, curly hairstyle so that his child could easily spot him during matches.

The celebration follows Spain’s dramatic 1-0 win over Argentina in the World Cup final, a result that delivered the country’s second World Cup title and completed a near-flawless run through the 2026 tournament. La Roja arrived at the World Cup as reigning European champions, having won UEFA Euro 2024 and reached the final of the 2024-25 UEFA Nations League, before topping their qualifying group and advancing through the knockout stage with wins over Austria, Portugal, Belgium and France, conceding just a single goal across their opening seven matches.

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That success was built under De la Fuente, who took charge of the senior team in December 2022 following Luis Enrique’s exit after Qatar 2022, having previously guided Spain’s youth sides to strong results. De la Fuente preserved Spain’s attacking identity while blending its traditional possession-based approach with a sharper counter-attacking edge, drawing heavily on young talents such as Pau Cubarsi, Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams, several of whom he had developed at youth level before bringing them into the senior setup.

This year’s triumph places Spain alongside its historic 2010 campaign, when a golden generation led by Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol and Iker Casillas won the country’s first World Cup under Vicente del Bosque, playing a tiki-taka style that came to define an era of Spanish football. The 2026 win also stands in contrast to Spain’s earlier Qatar 2022 campaign, which ended in a penalty-shootout exit to Morocco in the round of 16 despite an opening 7-0 rout of Costa Rica, underscoring how far the team progressed under De la Fuente’s leadership in the years that followed.

With 17 World Cup appearances since their debut in 1934 and 13 consecutive qualifications dating back to 1978, Spain’s 2026 victory adds another defining chapter to a footballing history already rich with milestones, from David Villa’s record nine World Cup goals to Sergio Ramos and Sergio Busquets’ shared record of 17 tournament appearances. For a squad built around a new generation of stars, this year’s final in New York New Jersey has now cemented itself among the most significant moments in Spanish football history.