Spain’s Young Stars Dominate Wimbledon and Euro 2024

The words we use to describe youth when we’re talking about professional sports often carry a negative connotation. Inexperienced. Unprepared. Naive. Underdeveloped. We fall in love with certain athletes who shine at a young age, but so many don’t quite meet our expectations. It dulls our senses and makes us skeptical when the next top young athlete comes around and grabs our attention by excelling immediately in their respective sports.

John Keating had a different idea about youth in the classroom in Dead Poets Society. He said, “You must strive to find your own voice, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”

On Sunday, an entire country’s sporting voice peaked around three athletes. All three are 22 or younger and none are in their athletic primes yet, but all three are playing at the top of their sports. Together they represent a resurgence of Spanish greatness in the two sports that are most important to its national sporting landscape.

Spain reached the top of the international sports world as Carlos Alcaraz won the gentlemen’s singles title at Wimbledon, trouncing seven-time champion Novak Djokovic in straight sets. Standing on the grass in southwest London, Alcaraz smiled when discussing the upcoming European Championship soccer final between England and Spain later that night.

“I’ve already done my job,” Alcaraz said. “So let’s see the football.”

Not only did Alcaraz watch the football, he live-tweeted the match as Spain won its seventh consecutive Euro match and fourth-ever Euro title with a 2-1 victory over England in Berlin. No other nation has more than three Euro titles. Spanish wingers Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal combined for the opening goal; Yamal took home the young player of the tournament award. Alcaraz is 21 years old. Williams turned 22 on Friday. Yamal turned 17 on Saturday. Last year, then-19-year-old Salma Paralluelo was one of Spain’s key players when the country claimed its first women’s World Cup title.

When you combine the tennis and international soccer titles with Real Madrid’s Champions League success in the men’s club game and Barcelona’s dominance in the women’s game, Spain is winning big in both sports. And this new era of success is being propelled by young players, drawing parallels to the generation that propelled Spain to the top of both sports two decades ago.

Before Rafael Nadal broke onto the tennis scene with his first French Open title in 2005 at age 19, Spanish tennis didn’t have much history of winning at the top level of the sport. Only two Spanish players had ever won more than two grand slams (Manuel Santana and Arantxa Sánchez), and only one men’s player had won multiple in the Open Era (Sergi Bruguera). Nadal ushered in an era of Spanish tennis success and has now won 22 grand slam titles. Spain also won the Davis Cup, an international team competition, four times since Nadal’s breakthrough, in 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2019. It wasn’t long until Nadal beat Federer at Wimbledon in 2008, widely considered one of the best tennis matches ever. And that match came only a week after Spain made history on the pitch.

Nadal’s rise preceded the rise of the greatest Spanish soccer generation by a few years, but Spain’s rapid ascension to the top of the soccer world was underway before Euro 2008. Spain lost in the round of 16 in the 2006 World Cup, but that team’s style of play led commentator Andrés Montes to coin the term “tiki-taka.”

That generation of Spanish talent would go on to dominate the sport’s international tournaments for the next half-decade. They defended by always having the ball and wearing teams down with their intricate one-touch passing combinations. The technically skilled midfielders, gifted with immense passing quality, became champions in 2008 when they won the Euros. They became legends with a 2010 World Cup win, Spain’s first, and reached rarefied air when Spain repeated as Euro champions in 2012. Each team was somewhat different, but shared the same underlying philosophy. While the Spanish team won trophies in 2008 and 2010, Nadal successfully completed the “channel double” by winning both the French Open on clay and Wimbledon on grass in the two years. Alcaraz became the sixth man in the Open Era to complete the channel double this year, joining Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer.

As Nadal reaches the end of his career now, he’s essentially passed the torch of Spanish tennis to Alcaraz. The two will play doubles together in the Olympics in Paris in a couple of weeks, but Alcaraz is already the youngest men’s world no. 1 of all time and four-time grand slam champion and won’t turn 22 until next May. It was immediately apparent that Alcaraz would leave his mark on the sport when he made a run to the quarterfinal in the 2021 U.S. Open at age 18. He had every shot imaginable at his disposal, and his combination of breathless defensive speed and constant aggression from everywhere on the court dazzled crowds and rapidly fueled his ascension to world no. 1, a position he claimed a year later when he beat Casper Ruud in the U.S. Open final.

One small asterisk was associated with that title for Alcaraz: Djokovic could not play in the tournament due to his vaccination status. The two hadn’t yet met in a grand slam. Alcaraz may have been no. 1, but he needed a marquee win against Djokovic to truly establish himself as the best.

They met twice in 2023. Alcaraz cramped up in the French Open semifinal and lost in four sets, but he got revenge on the sport’s most famous court in a dramatic five-set win in 2023 to claim the Wimbledon title. With that win, Alcaraz signaled he was truly on Djokovic’s level. At the time, it was Djokovic’s first loss at Wimbledon since 2017.

As the two careers are now on opposing trajectories (given Djokovic, 37, is now in slow decline from the highest heights the sport has ever seen), Sunday’s matchup at Wimbledon represented the new reality in men’s tennis. With Djokovic’s recent knee surgery hampering his movement, the Serbian champion couldn’t even come close to matching the level Alcaraz consistently played at. In the opening game it took a lengthy 13 minutes for Alcaraz to break Djokovic’s serve, and then the first two sets were over in a flash. Djokovic doesn’t have a top 10 win this year, and Alcaraz has now beaten Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev, and Djokovic—the rest of the top five—to win his past two grand slams.

Alcaraz isn’t always consistent. He’s had bouts of sloppy play in this tournament and puzzling errors, but that’s a part of his idealistic tennis genius. Alcaraz genuinely believes he can make any shot from anywhere on the court, and his nonstop aggression, smile, and genuine enjoyment of the shot-making are what make his matches so magnetic to even the most casual tennis fan. When his aggression pays off, as it did with his break of Djokovic’s serve in the third set en route to the title, it produces some of the highest-quality tennis the sport has ever seen. Sunday’s final was maybe the best match of his career, because he sustained his high level of play for almost all of the 2:27 it lasted.

He combines his youthful exuberance and relentless athleticism with, at times, naive tactics. But what is equally impressive is that despite his inexperience relative to most of his peers, Alcaraz carries himself with an experienced demeanor in between points. Like his young peers on the pitch, he moves with explosiveness, but also has the control of a much more experienced top-level athlete.

When Spain took the field for the semifinal against France, a red-card suspension for Dani Carvajal meant that Spain had to start 38-year-old Jesus Navas at right back behind Yamal in the Spanish 4-3-3 formation. Navas is older than Yamal’s father. Yamal scored one of the best goals in the entire tournament with a curled left-footed shot from outside the penalty area that lifted just beyond the outstretched arms of French goalkeeper Mike Maignan. Yamal also assisted Spain’s first goal of the quarterfinal clash against Germany. Williams’s success in this tournament flew under the radar because Yamal was on the opposite flank, but the two feed off of each other. Williams’s performances won’t be under-discussed anymore now that he scored in the Euro final.

After England’s defense-first approach and dogged defensive work on the wings had mostly frustrated the young Spanish duo in the opening 45 minutes, the combination of the two youngsters led to Spain’s breakthrough goal. Carvajal looked up and played a ball slightly behind Yamal, who had to halt his wide run but was able to flip his hips, wrangle the ball, and start cutting toward goal. After three touches, Yamal played a soft, bouncing pass across the penalty area that went behind the running Dani Olmo but fell beautifully on the third bounce to Williams, charging into the penalty area from the left.

A confident left-foot finish put Spain up 1-0 just 69 seconds into the second half. Yamal was the first player to greet him after his knee slide in the corner and jumped on Williams’s back. Seconds later, the rest of the red-clad Spanish joined the celebrations.

Spain didn’t just win this tournament by winning all seven matches. They beat the host nation of Germany. They beat the second- and third-place finishers in the 2022 World Cup (France and Croatia). They beat the two teams who played in the Euro 2020 final (England and Italy). You won’t find a more challenging run through a tournament.

Spain’s spine and underlying identity hasn’t changed much from the recent versions who lost on penalties to Italy and Morocco at the last Euros and World Cup, respectively. What has changed is a willingness to embrace youth. An embrace of dynamic and pacey wingers who may lose possession more than Spanish teams of the past, but will also create more chances through their direct play. If you watched Spain in Qatar, it’d be fair to call them a bit boring. There was lots of possession and passing, but not much danger to the opposition—Spain scored just two goals in the last three matches against Germany, Japan, and Morocco. Spain scored the most goals at Euro 2024, with 15 in seven matches; Yamal had one goal and four assists, while Williams had two goals and an assist.

Yamal’s patience and movement on the ball are traits that are often seen in a much older athlete. While Alcaraz has elements of Nadal in his game, he resembles a mix of Djokovic’s defensive abilities with Federer’s shot-making and aggression, as well. Franz Kafka once wrote that youth are happy because they can see beauty, and the beauty of the Spanish youth is set to shine for years to come.