Luis de la Fuente stands by his players after FIFA bans over World Cup final brawl

Ten games of suspension for one player, seven for another, three for a coach and one more for another player. The list of punishments handed down after the brawl at the end of the last World Cup final between Spain and Argentina was a long one, and this week brought the reaction many had been waiting for: that of Luis de la Fuente.

Spain's head coach held nothing back in an interview on the program 25 horas on Radio Nacional de España. There, he made his version of events crystal clear: his players, he said, were not the instigators of the incident, but quite the opposite.

FIFA's Disciplinary Committee had announced the sanctions the previous Friday. On the Argentine side, Leandro Paredes received a ten-match suspension, Nahuel Molina was hit with seven, assistant coach Roberto Ayala got three, and Thiago Almada received one. On the Spanish side, the only player sanctioned was Gavi, also given a one-match ban.

De la Fuente did not dispute that FIFA had to act. In fact, he was blunt in calling what happened "intolerable and unacceptable" and argued that these kinds of incidents need to be "brought to light" so they don't happen again. But he quickly shifted the focus elsewhere.

You can't have that image going out to more than two billion people. But the most important thing is that our players were the victims. None of them had anything to do with starting any of those confrontations. They were victims, and honestly, they were the ones harmed by the whole situationLuis de la Fuente

The statement leaves little room for interpretation: for the head coach, the sanction against Gavi is, at its core, an unfair consequence of a fight his players didn't start. It's a full-throated defense of his squad, the kind you'd expect from someone sitting on that bench.

There's another detail De la Fuente wanted to share, one that softens the tone of the controversy a bit: he said he received apology messages, both from Argentina's head coach, Lionel Scaloni, and from some of the Albiceleste players. That gesture, between rivals who had just battled through a World Cup final, says a lot about how the episode was viewed behind closed doors once tempers cooled.

A message for the future

Beyond assigning blame, De la Fuente kept coming back to one point that sounded almost like a plea: that these situations never happen again. And he didn't frame it just as a matter of image or sporting sanctions, but as something that touches directly on football's role in shaping values.

For the head coach, football has a duty to "educate and instill values" in young people, especially when a scene like that reaches more than two billion viewers worldwide. That reach, he stressed, is exactly what makes any incident of this kind doubly sensitive, even more so when it happens at the final stage of the sport's biggest competition.