{"id":22455,"date":"2026-05-13T07:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/22455\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T07:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:11:09","slug":"spain-coach-sweats-on-yamals-williams-fitness-for-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/22455\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain coach sweats on Yamal\u2019s, Williams\u2019 fitness for World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said he was counting on wingers Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams to be fit and available for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fifa.com\/worldcup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">World Cup<\/a> next month.<\/p>\n<p>Yamal, 18, suffered a hamstring injury in late April, which has caused him to miss the rest of the season for Barcelona, though his club have said he should be fit in time for the start of this summer\u2019s showpiece in the United States, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>Athletic Bilbao\u2019s Williams picked up a muscle injury on Sunday, while Arsenal midfielder Mikel Merino is also on the sidelines after breaking his right foot three months ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cI think that all the players who have been mentioned will be fit and available for the start of the World Cup and I believe for the first match,\u201d De la Fuente told journalists. <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cBut if it\u2019s not for the first match, it would be for the second or third, and it doesn\u2019t cause any major setbacks,\u201d the Spanish coach continued, adding it had been \u201ca very tough year in terms of injuries\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cThe world of injuries, which is the tragedy of sport, is what truly keeps us under a lot of pressure, especially in this critical phase because injuries that occur from now on, any minor muscular injury, are really difficult to recover from,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, De la Fuente confirmed that his World Cup squad list will include 26 players but that there would be additional players who would be included for a friendly against Iraq on June 4.<\/p>\n<p>Spain\u2019s World Cup opener will be against Cape Verde on June 15 in Atlanta. Their group also includes Uruguay and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said he was counting on wingers Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,11947,369,1492],"class_list":{"0":"post-22455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-spain","9":"tag-williams","10":"tag-world-cup","11":"tag-yamal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}