This has been seen before.
Dani Olmo not good enough to be a pillar of Spain. Then he proves he’s too good to wither on the bench.
Once again, Olmo has proven his worth. He might be the biggest reason why Spain is playing for the European Championship today.
These are Olmo’s third prestigious men’s competitions. In the previous European Championships, he assisted three goals, in the World Championships the balance was one scored and one assisted goal.
Now we are in completely different readings. Olmo might even win the goal exchange, even though he wasn’t even supposed to play.
In five matches, Olmo has scored three goals and provided two assists leading to goals.
“World Class” Rodrinthe PSG stalwart by Fabián Ruiz and the young, glowing one Peter’s a new star has emerged from behind. If Barcelona Gavi wouldn’t be on the sidelines due to a knee cruciate ligament injury, Olmo would have been even lower in the pecking order.
When Toni Kroos thundered Pedri at the start of the quarter-final between Germany and Spain, Spain had to be in trouble. The unfortunate situation could only strengthen Spain in the end.
– It was thought that Spain’s game would almost collapse. However, Olmo has been really effective. He almost got up from the bush, Urheilu’s expert Juho Rantala says.
Now he has made history. The last time the Spanish player was involved in five goals in one European Championship was in 2012, when La Roja won the championship.
“All their words came true”
At the Barcelona Academy, qualifying is notoriously tough.
Good players who have the ingredients for a career as a professional may fall off the ride in the middle of it all. Lionel Messi’s and Lamine Yamalin on the other hand, top promises like these rise from among the champions of their age group to world fame at a young age.
Then there is Olmo, who needs his own basket. “Players who left of their own accord and rose to stardom”. There aren’t many of them.
Olmo made his decision ten years ago. The best of the Balkans was hungry for a place in Barcelona, but Olmo packed his bags and went upstream to Zagreb.
He had just turned 16 and had spent half his life at the Barcelona Academy. In four seasons, he was the top scorer in his age group.
– I didn’t care where I was going or that I was out of the big five leagues. I didn’t know anything about Croatia, but I knew that in Barcelona there was a risk of drowning in the crowd, one of many players, without a clear path to the national team, he reasoned a couple of years ago.
The teenager had received a promise. The president of Croatia’s biggest club said he wanted him. In return, Dinamo Zagreb would make him the most expensive player sale in their history. The record holder was the national team captain Luka Modric.
– They offered something that no one else offered, and all their words came true, Olmo told El Mundo.
Dinamo is not Barcelona, but the ruler of Croatia and a renowned mill for the development of young players. In Barcelona the path to the top was clear but slow and competitive, while in Zagreb Olmo was the crown jewel.
Still, Olmo started with the juniors and saw exotic places too – fields where the rampant natural grass tickled up to the shins. However, in the very first season, he also got to shine in the representative team.
The second season was spent in the reserve team in Croatia’s second tier. Then followed a rapid leap, as the first season in the standard composition of the representative team ended with the selection as the best player in the entire league.
Around the same time, he turned 20. Croatia had become a second home that shaped him into who he is today.
Some still think Olmo is Croatian. It would be more logical than the impossible idea where Barcelona’s promise rose to the top in Eastern Europe.
Maybe they also remember how Olmo’s future was speculated. The head coach Zlatko Dalic considered him for Croatia’s squad for the 2018 World Cup when the doors to Spain’s men’s national team remained closed.
Olmo refused. It was Spain’s luck.
In reality, Olmo originates 30 kilometers from Barcelona. At first he represented Espanyol, Barcelona’s local rival. He didn’t stay there long before calls from the other side of town took him with him.
In the football family, Olmo’s older brother was further along in his playing career. Father, on the other hand, was a part-time coach. Olmo would have liked to continue at Espanyol, but his father found Barcelona’s offer irresistible.
The boy obeyed as long as he was allowed to play.
He had already done so at the age of eight, when Barcelona’s superstar Messi had come to watch the match of the team coached by Olmo’s father. He has recalled that he was annoyed when some of the children were “forced” to take a group photo, but that he agreed to sit down for a while.
– I didn’t even say anything to him. I just waited for the trigger and then went back to kicking like I did him a favor, Olmo laughed in later life.
13 years after the joint photo, Olmo and Dinamo’s vision was true. The German club Leipzig bought him from Croatia to the Bundesliga for 29 million euros.
The transfer amount was up to that point Zagreb’s biggest ever, as it should have been. There would have been more, but despite Bayern Munich’s courtship, Olmo wanted to go to Leipzig.
Since then, he has been linked to Barcelona. Nothing is likely to change after the feats of the European Championships. In 2021, the transfer fell through because Leipzig did not want to lose their star, and he did not want to leave the club in trouble in the last moments of the transfer window.
Last fall, Olmo scored three goals right into Bayern’s net in the German Super Cup match, which Leipzig won for the first time in its history.
The trophy was his third in a year and a half, as he had previously scored a penalty kick in the German Cup final in 2022 and started the winning goal in the 2023 final.
Olmo is a chess enthusiast. He plays goalkeeper in the national team Unai Simónin with.
He has also used chess to describe his own game philosophy.
– I always try to find the best solutions both with and without the ball. I try to create space either for myself or for others. I want to do everything for a reason, and not just for the sake of doing it, Olmo said last year for Sky Sports.
He prefers to play in the ten spot, i.e. behind the central striker, but he adapts to other positions as well, especially on the right wing. He wants the ball at his feet and then does something that changes the situation on the field.
In his opinion, the solutions should not be easy alibi passes that do not contribute to the game. Pressing Olmo is always a risky choice because his ability to challenge his guard one on one finds space and puts other defenders on the back foot.
In the Spanish team, he is one of many moving parts. Piers Yamal and Nico Williams are brave challengers, and Olmo’s stores have used the spaces that open in the middle in a brutal way.
The soup is a mixture of Spain, Croatia and Germany. Olmo has the ball DNA of a Spanish midfielder, but in Croatia he learned to struggle and grew up far from home. In Germany, the qualities are honed to their peak in high-intensity, fast-paced football.
– Would I be this kind of player if I had stayed at Barcelona? Hardly. A different culture awaited in Croatia. I learned a lot about physical football. In Spain, they thought more about the ball, especially in Barcelona. At the age of 16, I trained with the national team men who played in the World Cup. It was a huge step, he recalled to Sky Sports.
Olmo’s goal assist against Albania decided the match and the group win. In the quarter-final against Georgia, he feasted with a 4–1 goal.
In the semi-final against Germany, he scored the opening goal. In the final minute, his cross led Mikel Merino for the goal that took Spain to the semi-finals. There, his goal against France took Spain to the final.
– He is a great player. Fantastic player. I rate him highly. He thinks about the team more than himself, Spain’s head coach Luis de la Fuente said Olmo during the march.
Olmo and the success of the national teams have gone hand in hand for a long time.
In 2019, he was in de la Fuente’s team to win the under-21 European Championship. Olmo scored three goals, including the winning goal in the final.
Even then, he was not supposed to be among the solvers.
– I knew I was one of the most unknown players in the team. However, I also knew that if I put in the work, I would have a chance to compete for a place, he said to Marca.
In the Men’s European Championship 2021, Olmo failed in the penalty shootout of the semifinals, but had helped Spain to reach the top four overall. He had come off the field to decide the quarter-final against Croatia.
– I scored two goals. It was an amazing experience, and not only during the match, but also after. I went to thank the Spanish supporters, but the Croatians were also nice and grateful for what I did in Zagreb, he has recalled.
At the same summer’s Olympics, Olmo and Spain lost to Brazil in the follow-up match of the final. De la Fuente was the coach again.
– Many of us have played in the boys national teams under him. The basic idea has largely remained the same. He gives us a lot of freedom in the last third so that we can show our skills, Olmo described.
In the men’s national team, Olmo scored a goal in his first appearance. Last year, he was involved in winning the Nations League, again as a credit choice from the bench.
Now we play again in the final match.
There are many successful people in the team, and many stars. Williams and Yamal have been in the headlines, but looking at the story of individual goals, perhaps no player has been as decisive in this tournament as Olmo, who wears the number 10 shirt.
Among other things, Barcelona and Bayern are again dreaming of the familiar tactician, whose price is said to be 60 million euros. Slowly, the general public has also gotten to know him.
– I don’t feel that I have to prove anything to anyone, but if someone has doubts, I’m happy to show my skills. Every tournament is an opportunity for that, he told Süddeutsche Zeitung during the Games.
– I have always said that if you know something about football, you know me well.
The words must be true, at least after the events of the last few weeks.