“If it’s a boy, we’ll call him Marc. If it’s a girl, Cucurella.”
That was the message on a sign held up by fans in Munich on Tuesday night as Spain defeated France to reach the Euro 2024 final. It went viral on social media — just one of several moments featuring Marc Cucurella to do so. Back in his native Spain, the Chelsea left-back is a cult hero of the summer.
There’s one big reason behind that. Very few expected Cucurella to perform as he has been in Germany — one of Spain’s best players, and arguably the best left-back in the competition.
For starters, he was only called up by Luis de la Fuente because of injuries to Valencia’s Jose Gaya and Barcelona’s Alejandro Balde. Even then, the smart money was on Alex Grimaldo (and his 32 goal involvements with Bayer Leverkusen last term) starting ahead of him. But when crunch time arrived, De la Fuente went for the Chelsea man and has had no reason to regret it.
“Marc is a player you might never think to sign, but one you’ll surely never drop,” said Jose Luis Mendilibar, his former manager at Eibar who is now in charge at Olympiacos. Spain’s coaching staff can relate.
Cucurella has offered great balance in the defensive line, covering Nico Williams on the left wing while combining with him impressively in attack. Since the group stage, they have been the two players with the most passes between them in the competition.
Cucurella has become a cult hero among Spain fans (Stefan Matzke – sampics/Getty Images)
The 25-year-old has barely put a foot wrong in winning key duels against world-class wingers such as Federico Chiesa, Leroy Sane and Ousmane Dembele. All of this has been achieved in a style that Spain fans love.
Cucurella is not the tallest (5ft 8in/173cm) but he loves to be the tough guy and tells off opponents when needed. He can look sloppy on the ball but he has registered a 91.2 per cent passing accuracy in Germany. Then there is the unmistakable hairstyle: a curly-afro mix that perfectly complements the charismatic individual underneath. He is known as a joker, a showman, and he likes to live up to that.
His story has not always been a happy one, however. Cucurella has endured two years of struggles at Chelsea. His £60million ($77.8m) transfer from Brighton in the summer of 2022 brought new pressures at a difficult time. He suffered off-the-pitch issues and health struggles while living through general football turmoil at Chelsea.
He’ll dive into all of this in this interview — but to start, let’s chat about him becoming Spain’s favourite meme.
The Athletic: Are the memes about you still the main theme among the WhatsApp group you have with your Spain team-mates?
Cucurella: To be fair, there is a good mix in there, but yes a lot of them are mine. There are also players making stickers out of it. It’s so funny. We have a good laugh. It has not stopped since the Italy game, when memes about me on TikTok or X just started to fly. Now they’re also sending some of Dani Carvajal, Nacho… all the players who’ve had their moments I guess. Alvaro Morata, who probably is the funniest character here, even made me sing a song in front of the rest of the team…
TA: How did that happen?
Cucurella: We made this bet playing golf. He went for the mental games against me. If I missed, I had to sing. I couldn’t cope with the pressure and I missed my shot (laughs a lot), the hole was just getting smaller and smaller, you know? I was confident because I’m a star at mini golf. That was a bad miss so my singing in front of everyone was a fair price to pay.
TA: But a lot of your team-mates here, and even the manager, keep saying you are the funniest character in the squad.
Cucurella: I don’t know! It’s a bit my personality, I guess. I also get told this at home by my parents. If there’s a moment when we need to talk about something serious, I always tend to crack a joke or say something silly. My parents say it’s impossible to talk about something serious with me.
When conversations turn into serious or tense subjects, I just don’t like it. I prefer not to take stuff too seriously. In the end, here in Germany, we have been together for many days now, and the jokes I might do lift spirits a bit. It makes everything funny, and without that daily life would be way tougher.
TA: Focusing on the Euros, you have already put in plenty of performances to remember. Which stands out for you?
Cucurella: It’s the Italy game. It felt like the most important game in my career so far, a huge stage… and we delivered a brilliant performance. We won just 1-0 but it felt like we battered them. It was an almost perfect game. We qualified for the next round that day too and a lot of feelings came together.
Williams and Cucurella celebrate beating France in the Euro 2024 semi-finals (Masashi Hara/Getty Images)
TA: In the semi-final against France, you were booed by fans in the stands. The decision not to penalise you for a handball in the quarter-final against Germany was probably fresh in their minds. How did you cope with that?
Cucurella: At the start, I was surprised. I realised for the first time when my name was read out before the match, and a lot of people started booing. I thought about it a bit and soon figured out they came for the handball situation. I did not care too much, but at the same time, it felt a bit sad that some people came to that game just to boo a single player. Some people wasted tickets that could have gone to fans who would have really enjoyed the match.
Jamal Musiala’s shot struck Cucurella’s arm in the penalty box (Tom Weller/picture alliance via Getty Images)
But in a way, I got used to that when I returned to Brighton in a Chelsea shirt. It was another night when the boos were really loud every time I touched the ball, so I got used to it. The first time I went through this… I won’t say it’s an unbearable feeling but it’s unpleasant. Now I’m more used to it.
TA: Let’s move on to the final. We can expect you to face a player you know very well from your Premier League duels in Bukayo Saka. How do you stop him?
Cucurella: I know how Saka plays. I don’t really need to watch a lot of footage as I normally watch all the Arsenal games. It is so tough to mark him, but those challenges are nice for me. Playing against rivals of such quality is nice, I’m sure we both can’t wait for it.
My main target is to make him feel uncomfortable. I also think that the game’s script will depend a lot on Spain and how we play, rather than what England do. If we dominate the ball as we’ve done and stay aware of the high pressure and everything we need to do to avoid counter-attacks, we’ll have plenty of chances to win.
TA: Is there a particular England player you’ve struggled to defend against?
Cucurella: He has not played a lot at Euro 2024, but it has to be Cole Palmer. His football brain works so quickly, he is always a step ahead of the rest. His decision-making is almost always excellent, and that sort of intelligence is the most difficult thing to defend against, you just can’t predict what he’ll do next. I’ve suffered a lot in training.
He reminds me a lot of Lamine Yamal. Same style of player. He is a guy who does not care too much about anything. They don’t take life or themselves too seriously. If you ran into Palmer in the streets, you would never tell he is a footballer. But then he plays and… oof.
Cucurella and Palmer after the latter’s hat trick against Everton in April (Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
He arrived at a tough time for Chelsea, when the team was struggling, and he made an impact from the start. That helped him a lot to keep growing and getting more confident. If you manage to get those kinds of players in a situation of confidence, they make the difference. I’m so happy and hope he carries on like this… but after this weekend!
He is a special character. He is so serious. When people see him, it’s not like he is instantly likeable. It’s difficult to explain, but when any team-mate sees me they instantly know I am up for a joke and that we can engage in that way. But he is always so serious.
Still, we got along well, really quickly, since the first training sessions. We were doing mini-matches in training, five-a-side, and the coaches put us together in some. From there, we clicked. Whenever we were on the same team, we would never lose. We had this joke of being the winning team and that’s how our good bond started.
TA: You mentioned the tough times Chelsea has gone through. How did you cope with the agitation around the club and what impact has it had on your career?
Cucurella: Until the summer of 2022, my football career had been great: a constant progression, always upwards with no setbacks. Then I arrived at a club where the expectations were so, so high. Until then, I had played at clubs where every victory felt really special, where every point is celebrated. Then you go to Chelsea, where you win a game because that’s what you have to do. There is no time to chill or enjoy.
This was something I could expect. But then that first season we had several managerial… a lot of things happened in the club. It all combined and it was the perfect storm.
Cucurella and Pochettino in April on the Chelsea sidelines (Visionhaus/Getty Images)
I had my struggles, too. I spent the first two months living in a hotel with my family, then soon after we found a place to live we had thieves breaking into our home. After this, I spent two days hospitalised for a virus. I lost a lot of weight and had to start from scratch to get in shape again. It wasn’t easy to come back. The team couldn’t find their way on the pitch, either.
And finally, fans judged me and some other team-mates by the price Chelsea paid for us, which has nothing to do with me! If that money had gone straight into my pocket maybe that would have been fair. People expect that, with certain price tags, you need to be a machine. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand that we are normal people who have our own problems off the pitch. We have worse and better phases in our lives.
It’s been hard to turn the tables. I’ve worked very hard. I’ve suffered a lot for my family too. That’s been the worst thing. I was a bit scared, in the moments I was being criticised, that when going for a walk in the city with my family someone would insult us. It’s never happened in a bad way but I was a bit wary of that. That’s what made me worry the most. In the end this is part of football, I guess. You have to stay silent and keep working.
I was working with a psychologist for a while. It helped me a lot to understand my job. Confidence is the most important thing. You miss it when you struggle, but it flows when you thrive. I’ve worked a lot on this, to stabilise those moments. This season I didn’t start well either, not playing much. But I felt I could get better and better, and after training hard I took my chance when it was given.
Cucurella blocks a shot during Spain’s opening match with Croatia (Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)
TA: You ended the season on a good note, with six Premier League wins in a row, but Mauricio Pochettino was sacked.
Cucurella: We went through many bad patches, but we ended the season super good. He (Pochettino) didn’t have an easy job. He arrived at a club full of new players, and young ones. I think we signed 14 and sold another 14. But we are human beings and a football team does not click from one day to the next. A lot of work needs to be put in.
In the best moment we were in, we ended up with six wins in a row and if there had been three more games we would have won them. But he was sacked. It was a shock, an impact for everyone. Mainly because of the momentum. In the end, this stuff is not on us, the players. The owners took that decision.
From my side, I’m thankful to Pochettino. In pre-season it was complicated. But little by little we understood each other, not just with the manager but with the backroom staff, too. We talked things through, I understood what I needed to do and our relationship in the end was great.
TA: Does the future look exciting now with Enzo Marezca? Has he been in touch with you?
Cucurella: Yes, he texted me a couple of days ago. The feelings were good, it all looked exciting, so I am looking forward to it. Some people from Chelsea reached me too during the Euros. I’ve sensed that our team-mates are very happy too.
We have a similar group of players to last season and football relies heavily on relationships with everyone, team-mates, managers… if you have a team-mate you really get along with and you know each other, it has an impact on the pitch.
Williams and Cucurella have combined to great effect (Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
TA: Speaking about team-mates you get along with, there is Nico Williams. You have created a strong connection with him. How have you seen his impact on Euro 2024?
Cucurella: It’s a similar case to what I told you about Cole Palmer. Without doing too much in the camp, we have created a very good relationship with Nico and in the end, these sorts of players need to feel comfortable and important. What I tell Nico all the time is that he has to do his thing, create whatever goes through his mind, and I’ll be covering his back or doing anything he needs me to.
I tell him every day he should come to Chelsea, he would help us a lot! He is more than welcome and he knows that (laughs). But he is so young, he has to decide by himself and with his people, so it’s not time to put too many things in his head.
TA: Is this you acting like a captain? You will be one of the most veteran members of the squad next season…
Cucurella: Well, I love the captain role — but it includes a lot of responsibilities inside the group that I’m not sure I have to do (laughs). I am very happy with the role I have, I don’t need to wear the armband to feel more important or valued. I’m happy. Whatever comes will be fine.
(Top photo: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty Images)
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