The RFFPA Coaches Committee presents its gold badge to Luis de la Fuente, Montse Tomé, Santi Denia, José Lana, Hernán Pérez and Juanjo González.

Football, wisdom, humility, togetherness, successes... It is not easy to gather the list of national coaches who participated in the ‘Coaches’ Day' of the Royal Football Federation of the Principality of Asturias (RFFPA), in an emotional day of recognition. In the Asturian town of Noreña, in front of an auditorium full of more than 200 coaches, they talked about football and nothing else but pure football.

Always open to sharing knowledge and reinforcing their work with sporting successes at both European and world level, the Spanish coaches have become a point of reference and a working model to copy for many, which is why the RFFPA Coaches Committee, chaired by Juan José Corujo, in the name of Maximino Martínez, presented the following coaches with the committee's gold insignia:

• Luis de la Fuente, winner of UEFA EURO 2024 with the Senior Men 's National Team.
• Montse Tomé, coach of the women's national team and winner of the UEFA Women's Nations League.
• Santi Denia, gold medallist at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
• José Lana, European U-19 men's champion and recently appointed Syria coach
• Hernán Pérez, U-17 coach and member of the technical staff at the U-19 European Championships
• Juanjo González, member of the coaching staff of the senior men's national team that won UEFA EURO 2024.

Luis de la Fuente: ‘The players have taken in the work they have done since the youth teams, they have become loyal to a football idea that is recognised worldwide and to which we are always adding nuances because football evolves and which they then develop to perfection because they have fantastic talents, they are the best in the world at interpreting the game’.

Montse Tomé: ‘As coaches we have to evolve, like football, and sharing helps you to grow. In terms of resources, we have the same resources as the senior men's national team, so we can work with all the guarantees to give the best opportunities possible to the players. We have little time in the training camps and the use of video is key’.

Santi Denia: ‘The Spanish National Team Championships are precious and the germ from which we feed, as well as the information from the coaches. We have to be able to select the players well’.

José María Lana: ‘In the RFEF there are reports of more than 5,000 players, from there we have to make a filter and we start with 200/250 players for each category. Before you had to travel 400 kilometres to watch a match, now in 12 hours you can analyse 10 matches and that allows us to monitor the players in Spain more extensively’.

Hernán Pérez: ‘The kids who come here give their all, and the generations who come here feel a great pride in representing the national team. We are a country of important sportsmen’.

Juanjo González: ‘The players are very hungry, as coaches we have to speak to them clearly, be direct, sincere and show them the way forward. At UEFA EURO 2024, the biggest success was winning, but we are very proud of how we won, of everyone's commitment and their behaviour. All this comes after a path that you lay beforehand’.

At the ceremony, which was also attended by José Ramón Cuetos Lobo, president of the RFFPA, and David Gutiérrez, president of the RFEF Coaches Committee, José Vicente Fernández was also presented with the gold badge of the RFFPA Coaches Committee for his more than 30 years of dedication to Asturian football, both at club level with Real Oviedo and Astur CF and with the Asturian regional teams, as well as giving the trophies to the coaches who won official titles in the regional and national categories during the 2023-24 season.