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How Nolito has rejuvenated Spain’s attack

By on June 24, 2016

Nolito might be older than the majority of Spain’s Euro 2016 squad but he has been a breath of fresh air for La Roja in France.  This is the story of how the twenty-nine-year-old forward has broken into the Spanish national team at an age where many strikers are already winding down their international careers. 

Spain’s worst fears came true at World Cup 2014.  In the heat of Brazil, they no longer possessed the mojo for their famed tiki-taka to beat the world’s best teams.  Infamously, they fell at the hands of more direct approaches taken by the likes of the Netherlands and Chile, allowing seven goals in the process.

In the two years that have followed their humiliating group-stage exit at the tournament, it was unclear whether Vicente del Bosque was on track to solve Spain’s conundrum.  He began to filter out older players like Xavi and Iker Casillas, who was relegated to a supporting role behind David de Gea at this summer’s European Championships.

However, Spain’s Euro Qualifying highlighted the one missing piece to the puzzle: they needed a difference maker.

Del Bosque has searched far and wide for a new solution up top, to varying success.  With both David Villa and Fernando Torres effectively retired from international duty after the World Cup embarrassment, del Bosque turned to Chelsea’s Diego Costa.  However, he has struggled to mesh into del Bosque’s team and was excluded from Spain’s Euro squad after a dreadful season with Chelsea.

Promising Valencia forward Paco Alcacer, included in a list of five rising internationals I highlighted in an article for the BBC Match of the Day Magazine last year, was Spain’s top scorer in Euro qualifying but didn’t make the final roster either.

Of their front line at World Cup 2014, only Pedro (the least traditional of the bunch) is still around two years later at Euro 2016.

Instead, Del Bosque has found what he was looking for in the most unlikely of candidates, twenty-nine-year-old Celta de Vigo forward Nolito.  Although Nolito had only made five appearances for the national team before this summer, he earned his spot on the roster with four goals in warm-up friendlies against South Korea and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At an age where many strikers are already winding down their international careers, Nolito’s is just ramping up.  The Barcelona reject has carried his fantastic run of form for Celta de Vigo into the national team camp and has formed a formidable partnership with Juventus striker Alvaro Morata up front to restore Spain’s mojo.

The rest of Spain’s lineup in a 3-0 victory over Turkey were all present at the 2014 World Cup but the presence of Morata and Nolito, who combined to score all the goals on the night, has brought back Spain’s old swagger.  As Amy Lawrence put it in The Guardian, there’s nothing false about Spain’s frontline now.

Morata, having risen from the youth ranks at Real Madrid before making a high-profile move to Juventus and leading the Old Lady to the 2015 Champions League final, was always likely to carry the torch for the next generation of Spanish strikers.

Yet Nolito’s path to the top has been far less straightforward.

Nolito, whose real name is Manuel Agudo Duran, grew up in the southern coastal city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain under the care of his grandparents.  In a large family household where money was stringent, Nolito went through some difficult years.  Yet the hardships of his youth shaped him to become ever grateful for his current situation.

“I went through some tough times but it makes you see life in a different way,” he said in a recent interview with FIFA TV. “It helps you value things that other people may not value. If everything had been easy, I don’t think I’d value life as much as I do.”

Per the Daily Mail, he added: “I try to be a normal person in spite of the repercussions of me being a footballer. I like messing about with friends; I know that when all this ends I will just go back to being somebody normal.”

Reportedly, it was his grandfather Manuel who first spotted Nolito’s talent and encouraged him to follow his dream of becoming a professional footballer.

He briefly represented the Valencia academy between 2003-2004 but played for local third-division side Sanluqueno for the majority of his youth career. Having broken into Sanluqueno’s first team at the age of just seventeen, he moved up to second-division side Ecija after scoring twenty-four goals in his first thirty-two pro appearances.

In 2008, he made another big step up to Barcelona B.  Although they played in the same second tier as Ecija, there was also the opportunity for him to break into the first team.  Indeed, legendary first-team coach Guardiola had a particularly keen eye on Nolito and was on hand to watch the winger put in a goalscoring, man-of-the-match performance against Numancia in September of 2010.  Just a week later, Guardiola handed Nolito his first team debut against Mallorca in La Liga.

Nolito spent the next year vying for a first team position but with Lionel Messi & Co. sweeping everything in world football, it soon became apparent that he had to look elsewhere for playing time.

And so he joined Benfica, where he impressed with a goalscoring debut.  He scored fifteen goals in his first season in Portugal, including a goal and an assist in a friendly victory over Arsenal.

Yet playing opportunities dried up the following year and following a short loan move to Granada he joined Celta.  At the time, they were coached by current Barcelona gaffer Luis Enrique and Nolito was at a crossroads in his career.

Yet Nolito helped lead the recently promoted side to ninth in the league with the aid of a drastically improved diet and a newfound sense of belief. Nolito has scored in all of his three seasons at Celta and alongside Iago Aspas, lead the club to sixth in the league and a semifinal berth in the Copa del Rey.

Six years ago, Nolito couldn’t break into Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team but now he is on the top of his old manager’s list of transfer targets at Manchester City.

And despite his recent success with the national team Nolito keeps his feet on the ground; he dedicates every goal to his grandfather and daughter Lola.  Oh, and Iker Casillas as well, an idol from Nolito’s teenage years.

Having made his national team debut in 2014 and briefly appearing last year, his spotlight on the Spanish has now given Nolito a platform to make the next step up in his career.

“I’m a person that likes to be motivated…I don’t settle for anything, you can always improve and better yourself on many levels.  Being on the national team [helps with that].”

“I always think that the best is yet to come.”

With a high-profile move to Manchester City looming on the horizon, he’s not wrong.

Homepage photo credit: Alface [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.