ANDnext monday It is the deadline for the 48 teams participating in the World Cup 2026 Give FIFA the first cut. With a maximum of 55 players, of which four must be goalkeepers, the selectors will take the first step, which is not obligatory to make public.
In this World Cup that pre-list is decisive. Because the 26 of each selection will come from it, a list that will be published on June 1. The change comes from there. Until now, with pre-lists of 35, you could choose outside that limit in case of injury up to 24 hours before the debut of each country. In this World Cup you can only use the 55 of May 11. In the case of goalkeepers, changes due to injury or illness can be made at any time during the competition.
In the plans of Luis de la Fuente There is only one Real Madrid player with a real chance of being in the World Cup: Dean Huijsen. The deadlines with Dani Carvajal, To the sadness of the coach, they have run out. He has hardly had any minutes since October. And the ones he has enjoyed have never been on highly demanding dates. The Euro Cup champion winger ends the season injured and without even knowing if he will make it to the final matchday to say goodbye to the team. Bernabeu on the grass.
Cubarsí breaks and makes Huijsen debut with the Spanish team
That leaves Huijsen as the only real way for a Real Madrid player to be with the Spanish team in the World Cup. The Amsterdam-born centre-back has been a fixture on the charts since he debuted in March of last year. But his performance this season places a question mark on the final choice of centre-backs.
His level left him off the March list, but he improved by playing alongside Rüdiger and entered. With Laporte and CubarsWith a secure place, De la Fuente has six options for two positions. It is a decision to be made between Huijsen, Le Normand -an insurance for the coach even if he was not there in March-, Vivian, Pubill -their steps to the World Cup are gigantic-, Mosquera and Eric García.
Unprecedented
In the event that it was Huijsen one of those left out – something that, based on the lists that De la Fuente has been giving, seems an unlikely option – we could be facing Spain’s first list for a World Cup without a single Real Madrid player.
And if Huijsen enters, we would be facing something that only has one precedent. It was in 1950, when there was only one Real Madrid player in the team that Guillermo Eizaguirre and Benito Díaz took to the World Cup in Brazil: Luis Molowny. In the last one, in Qatar, there were two: Carvajal and Asensio.
On the other side are the World Cups 1962 and 1986. Spain went to Chile and Mexico with seven Madrid players. They were two teams for history: the one from the first five European Cups and the one from the Quinta del Buitre.
Godín blesses Pubill: “He is a beast”@DSports
The current Madrid jumped to the Allianz Arena in the second leg of the Champions League without a single selectable player. Gonzalo he could have had his options if he had played, Racing stopped dead, Ceballos disappeared and Fran Garcia It doesn’t come close to Cucurella or Grimaldo.
Molwny’s loneliness
They were other times. Real Madrid It was a team that, after the Civil War, only had two titles. He was Cup champion in 1946 and retained the title a season later. His weight in the national team had nothing to do with what he had in the first World Cup that Spain attended.
In 1934, Amadeo García Salazar took five Real Madrid fans to Italy. There were three defensive framework: Zamora, Ciriaco and Quincoces. Together with them, Luis Regueiro and Hilario.
World Cup Brazil 1950: Spain 1-0 England
When on June 17, 1950, the same day that Kubala signed for Barcelona, the Spanish expedition headed to Brazil, only one Madrid player was traveling: Luis Molowny. That season, Madrid had finished fourth in the League and lost in the Cup semifinals against Valladolid.
The white player who was going to the World Cup was traveling with just two games with the national team. The two before the debut, the qualification ones against Portugal. It debuted on April 2, in the 5-1 in Chamartín, with his final goal. In Lisbon he started again in the 2-2 draw. He played a gray game, which led a sector of the Press to question his presence in the World Cup. The debate revolved around the lack of connection between the canary and the powerful trio of attackers that formed Panizo, Zarra and Gainza, the three references of Athletic.
Molowny, accustomed to controversy over his game, did not raise his voice. On June 14, Eizaguirre and Díaz They nominated the 22 World Cup winners: five from Barcelona; four from Athletic and Valencia; two from Espanyol and Atlético de Madrid; and one from Valladolid, Deportivo, Celta, Sevilla and Real Madrid.
On June 25, in Curitiba, The team made its debut against the United States. They won 3-1, but the first Spanish goal did not arrive until the 81st minute. The game was bad and the press called for three new faces against Chile: Molowny, Panizo and Ramallets. Of the three, only the Canarian participated in the 2-0 victory against Chile in Maracaná.
The Madrid player only appeared in the team in the 2-2 draw against Uruguay, the first match of the second phase of a World Cup in which Spain was fourth. With Spain He only played seven games in his entire career.
