Samu Agehehowa came on for Oyazrzabal, as De la Fuente left Morata on the bench, following a frustrating few months for the striker.<\/p>\n
His return to Italy was short lived in 2024\/25, as AC Milan loaned him to Galatasaray in February<\/a>, but he still managed seven goals in Turkey.<\/p>\n After taking the senior job in February 2023, De la Fuente immediately installed Morata as captain, and he led the team to glory in the UEFA Euro 2024 final over England.<\/p>\n His lack of recent prominence is not an issue for the manager who is confident over his experienced frontman.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a leader and especially important for us, regardless of whether he plays more or less. He\u2019s the best leader,\u201d as per quotes from Marca<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has lots of football left in him and will have some very important moments with us. He contributes a lot behind the scenes, away from the spotlight. I attach great importance to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Since his debut in 2014, Morata has racked up 85 Spain caps \u2013 more that double the majority of De la Fuente\u2019s current squad \u2013 with 37 international goals scored, compared to Oyarzabal\u2019s 15.<\/p>\n He is currently fourth on the all-time top scorer list, one behind Fernando Torres, and 22 off leader David Villa.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post Spain boss backs Alvaro Morata over captaincy question<\/a> appeared first on Football Espa\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spain boss Luis de la Fuente has backed under-fire captain Alvaro Morata to remain crucial for La Roja in 2025. Ahead of the UEFA Nations League final against Portugal in Munich, De la Fuente faces a major call on starting the 32-year-old, with Mikel Oyarzabal in better form. With Lamine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2031,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions\/2031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}De la Fuente backs Morata as Spain captain<\/h2>\n
![\"Alvaro](\"http:\/\/www.albluesguide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Morata-Spain.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAlvaro Morata\u2019s Spain career in numbers<\/h2>\n