If you hit a quick Google search for ‘Marc Cucurella and flop’, you will see several hundred results, deriding Chelsea’s most expensive purchase for a defender. If you type in ‘Cucurella and dog’ on X’s search engine, several posts will show the resemblance between the Spanish left-back’s massive hair and goofy-looking dogs. And another search of ‘Cucurella and Euro 2024’ will show you why the Germans see him as the villain, targeting him with boos, since the semifinals.
His hair and his football — which stand out for their distinctive style — have made him a meme-able figure in both Spain and Europe. Cristian Romero, once, comically hauled him down by the tug of his hair in a game against Tottenham Hotspur. But Cucurella vows he will never cut his hair. “This is my style,” said the full-back.
On the football field, too, Cucurella is defiant and doesn’t let you escape his attention. In Berlin, at the Olympiastadion, in the 86 th minute of the final against England, with the score locked at 1-1, there was Cucurella taking flight. The ball was being played through the middle, but on the top left corner of your screen, you could see a tiny figure in red with his floppy afro hair flapping around, moving towards the right.
Kyle Walker spotted him while on his turn, but held his position, waiting for the ball to be laid off by Mikel Oyarzabal into the free space on the left side. Walker, among the game’s fastest defenders, has gone over this routine over a thousand times in his career and has been successful against the best in the business with his recovery runs.
But even he was beaten this time in the sprint race and his only hope now was to make himself big and hope that Cucurella, ‘the flop’, horribly kicked the ball out for a goal kick. After all, Cucurella had attempted just four crosses in the entire tournament before that and failed to find a target with a single one of them. Or that the impending jeers from the Germans in the crowd, might put him off.
Cucurella, though, took in a moment and before the boos could ring out, fizzed in a low cross along the floor to find Oyarzabal’s run, who slid in ahead of Marc Guehi to poke in to make it 2-1. The goal that sealed Spain’s record-breaking fourth title. But it was the assist that would also make history alongside it. The pass that would turn Cucurella into a cult hero back home.
The 25-year-old is not the archetypal Spanish footballer. For a la Masia graduate, who started as a left winger, his technique is often questioned. He had one domestic cup appearance in Barcelona colours but made a name for himself in Eibar and Getafe with his whiplash-esq hair and relentless energy to run up and down the flank. Graham Potter brought him to Brighton and Hove Albion in 2021 where he quickly became a fan favourite. He followed Potter to Chelsea in a £62 million move but things haven’t worked out too well for him.
In June, former England captain Gary Neville identified Cucurella as the reason Spain would struggle to go all the way. It’s hard to blame Neville too, and in hindsight, not many would have made the call for Cucurella to form the tournament’s tightest defence, let alone provide the championship-winning assist. And before that, he had pocketed Bukayo Saka for the majority of the game by hounding and harassing the England winger.
Saka has had the beating of Cucurella many times during their Arsenal-Chelsea showdowns with their last meeting in April ending in a 0-5 hammering for the Spanish full-back. But in the Spanish red, Cucurella wasn’t feeling blue anymore.
There was little evidence of this form in his two years at Chelsea with the club shipping in 110 goals with 63 coming in the recently-concluded season. Cucurella could have taken heart from the fact that he finished the season strongly. Yet, if you typed in ‘Spain’s 57-man provisional list’ on another Google search, Cucurella’s name does not feature in it. A full 57 names were ahead of him.
Cucurella wins a header against Saka in the Euro 2024 final. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
It took two injuries to Jose Gaya and Alejandra Balde for Cucurella to get a look in. Before the start of the Euros, Cucurella had just three senior Spanish caps – his second and third coming in March this year after being named Gaya’s injury replacement again. His first-ever Spanish call-up, too, in 2020, was for (take a guess?) the injured Gaya.
READ | Spain edges past England 2-1 to win the Euros for a record fourth time
But his first senior cap came in 2021 after an extraordinary turn of events, where the entire Spanish first-team squad had to be isolated after a positive Covid-19 result to Sergio Busquets. Seleccion called up its U-21 side, captained by Cucurella and coached by Luis de la Fuente, the current senior national team boss.
Cucurella walked his team out in an empty Estadio Municipal Butarque in Leganes and thrashed Lithuania 4-0. De la Fuente said the win came from the hearts more than tactics. He added, “It has been a unique moment in our lives and I hope the boys can repeat it many times.”
Cucurella had to wait three more years to get there, and when he got to the stage, he made sure it was a moment that held everyone’s attention.
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