From day one, Spain will face a very demanding European Championships with the draw, held this Saturday in Hamburg, producing a group stage of the very highest level and exposing the national team to major threats. Croatia, Italy and Albania, in that order, will be Luis de la Fuente's national team opponents, with the coach already aware of the difficulty of the group.

"It's a hard, complicated group. There are four very powerful teams. We already know Italy and Croatia in particular from having played them in the Nations, but we also know Albania and the great potential they have. They are probably unknown to the general public, but not to us," said the coach after the draw.

That said, the opponents must also be on their guard because Spain are a powerhouse of European football, UEFA Nations League champions and qualified for UEFA EURO 2024 after a remarkable group stage. "The opponents, I'm sure, will not be at all happy to have been drawn against Spain either.

For his part, Albert Luque, director of the national team, expressed himself along the same lines as the coach. "The draw is going to force us, from day one, to go out all guns blazing. We have Croatia to start with, we already know the difficulties they caused us in the Nations League. The second match is against Italy, the current champions and they will turn up giving it their all to be champions. And then Albania, who finished top of their group. They have had a very good qualifying campaign. The group forces us not to get ahead of ourselves and forget about who we might play in later rounds, we can't look beyond these three matches".