KAZAN, Russia -- "I'm the national team coach," said Fernando Hierro, pausing for a moment before adding: "We have to get used to that." He stopped again, laughed a little and then said: "We all do, don't we?"
It had taken a good few days and it had taken a match or two as well, standing there on the touchline, but now it seemed that he at least was doing just that. Late on Wednesday night in Kazan, Spain had just defeated Iran 1-0. It was Hierro's second game in charge but there was something about it -- something about what he said, too -- that made it feel almost as if it was his first. This is the beginning of something. Whether good or bad remains to be seen, but it was different.
Hierro never intended to be the Spain coach. Not today, not tomorrow, probably not ever. He had been asked on Spanish radio whether he might coach the national team one day. He replied that he had no ambition to do it. He coached for one season at Real Oviedo and seemed to have decided that he was not that keen to repeat the experience, which was why he took the job as Spain's director of football instead, which in turn was why he ended up becoming a coach after all, taking what some (but not Julen Lopetegui) consider the biggest job of them all. Because, when it came to the seleccion, Hierro had one big advantage: he was already there.
If, that is, he saw it as an advantage at all... and it wasn't clear that he did. He wasn't claiming to be the best qualified, either, but this was an emergency and the responsibility was partly his. So he became an accidental manager, a day-and-a-half after he said he had no intention of doing so and almost 24 hours after it was announced that Lopetegui was on his way to Real Madrid.
"If you look at my resume, it's hard to see anything that would make me a candidate for the national team," he admitted. "I am a coach because of the circumstances. I came here in a suit and I will leave in a tracksuit."
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Over the next few days Hierro spoke often and repeated the same message. He would be changing nothing unless he had to. "The plan," he said, "is to touch as little as possible." Not only because there hadn't been time to (although he said that too) but because there was no need. This World Cup would be a continuation of the work that had been done over the previous two years, work with which they had been delighted. Lopetegui had not been sacked because of that, after all. And against Portugal, the starting XI underlined that. Hierro's first team was Lopetegui's.
At first, Hierro's role was about unity and emotion, temperament over tactics. His qualities lay in his personality and leadership. Charismatic, calm and with vast experience in the game, just not really in actually coaching, he was popular with the players and sought to bring some sense of normality back. Training was set up to be enjoyable, collective. He wanted to lighten the mood, changing the way they felt and not the way they played.
"Spain will be recognisable," Hierro had said on the first day. "Lots of people stayed and the concepts are clear." A few days later, that line remained.
"Fernando knows the work is good and hasn't touched it much," said Iago Aspas. "Our style is non-negotiable," Isco agreed.
Carlos Queiroz, the Iran manager, called him the "perfect" person to fix a "fractured" Spain and Hierro's discourse fitted that: He talked about Spain as "family" trying to put the whole sorry mess behind them. Except that in one way, it was as if they didn't want to put it behind them at all: when it came to the manager. Sergio Ramos talked about Lopetegui being "present," and in a meeting with media two days before the Iran game, at which he impressed everyone, Hierro said the "copyright" on the team was Lopetegui's.
"It would be a mistake to come here and try to give this team my touch."
Something, though, was shifting. In the build-up to the second game, there was a tactical element to what Hierro said in the pre-match news conference the day before. He still talked about unity, still eulogised his players' attitude and maturity, still smiled, charming and calming, but talk of touching nothing was quietly dropped. There was talk of the other team too: an analysis of their strengths and a warning about how good they were; HIerro offered up evidence of Iran's threat.
There had been time, perhaps. What there may not have been was a pre-established plan for the game like there had for the first. He talked openly about his concern at the fact that Spain had conceded three goals in their opening game, more than they conceded in the whole of the 2010 World Cup.
It was not just what Hierro said, either. Some of Lopetegui's staff had remained but Hierro's team arrived and got to work. Juan Carlos Martinez was the new fitness coach, Julian Calero was the new assistant coach (at Oviedo, most of the technical and tactical work had been his), while Carlos Marchena had joined as... well... he wasn't really sure what his job title was, he admitted, but he played a kind of liaison role, linking coaching staff and playing squad.
Soon, they got to work. They identified flaws and sought solutions. They investigated changes and analysed a squad that, as per the previous message, he had supposedly been happy to let be. Bit by bit, there was a shift. A gentle one, of course, but there was one.
Conscious of the probability that Iran would play deep and extremely defensively, Hierro and his team began preparing Lucas Vazquez for a role on the right. He also returned Dani Carvajal to right-back, relegating Nacho to the bench. To fit Lucas in, he chose to remove Koke (there was no need for an extra midfielder) and instead moved Andres Iniesta and David Silva closer to Sergio Busquets. Ahead of them, Diego Costa continued at centre-forward while Isco was nudged further to the left, away from the central role he had occupied before. At half-time, Hierro admitted that the message he gave his players was: "width, width, width." That had been his plan.
The word there is his. Lopetegui would also prepare Spain for games like this, but he hadn't done it like this. This solution was of Hierro's making; it was not like Lopetegui had left behind plans and they just went onto the training pitch and read them out.
Much of what the former manager had done over the previous two years had been geared to strengthening their identity but giving them some tactical nuance. (Whether it was the right approach, whether or not it would have worked, is another issue.) That included a willingness to drop a little deeper and play a little more directly, a commitment to Costa, the occasional adoption of two up front and even the occasional 4-4-2.
The change that most stood out, though, was the work he had done on a three-man defence: it was a tactical variation he anticipated having to employ at the World Cup even if some of the players he had brought in to play roles in that system (Vitolo, Alonso) were ultimately not included. Iran was one of those games in which he anticipated applying it. By the time that match came, though, he had gone. And Hierro had other ideas.
Width was provided higher up by Isco and Lucas rather than arriving from deep. The four-man defence remained. Silva started deeper rather than wider, coming in to leave an avenue up the line. It is impossible to know for sure whether Lopetegui would have done the same, but on the evidence of the past two years it appears unlikely.
After the match, Hierro said: "Everything we asked of [the players], they did to the letter. We knew the plan perfectly."
Plan? Requests? Fulfilling orders? That, too, was quite a change. It was tempting too to see a change in something so simple as Hierro saying "as national team manager, I am happy." It might be a stretch but sitting there in Kazan, listening to him virtually daily for a week now, it felt like there was something in it.
When he answered a question about Lucas's role and that of Isco by starting: "I'm the national team manager" and suggesting that was something they'd all have to get used to, well, that sensation deepened.
The explanation offered up a different type of content to the words that had filled the previous days too, a different type of response. "Our scouting reports suggested that we could have Isco on the left looking for combinations, while on the right, we wanted depth and to open the pitch out, giving an escape through which Lucas and Dani could have one-on-ones or two-on-ones, gaining numerical superiority. They changed their right side during lots of passes of the game: Dani's side, Lucas' side. We had pace and depth, even though we knew it wasn't easy too. So, that was what we were trying to achieve."
In short, there was a plan, not just an inheritance. Not that it was perfect against an Iranian side that made life extremely difficult, with Carvajal moaning: "That's not football, it's unsporting." There's also no guarantee it will succeed as the tournament progresses. Lucas was unable to find the space in which he is effective and Spain's full-backs had their paths blocked by the wide men. While Spain did complete 580 passes more than their opponents, the ball didn't always circulate with the speed required. They didn't manage to comfortably close the game out either even with the substitutions made, bringing on Koke, Marco Asensio and Rodrigo, and suffered more than they would have liked in the final 20 minutes.
Although the one big debate pre-World Cup -- Diego Costa -- appears resolved now after three goals in two games, and however much this one was a fluke, and although his fit still feels imperfect, and although Hierro himself sought to end the other emerging debate regarding the oddly ill-at-ease David De Gea, there are doubts. There are doubts about the defensive vulnerability; the fitness; how high to press; the best structure (4-3-3 here, 4-2-3-1 in the opening game); Koke, Iniesta, even Silva.
There are issues for Fernando Hierro to contemplate and seek solutions. He is, after all, the Spain manager and that's something for everyone to get used to.