Marca: Lenormand is deeply loved by De La Fuente, he played a total of 1932 minutes for Spain

This Sunday, the Spanish national team will face Georgia at home in the World Cup preliminaries. Coach De La Fuente talked about the issue of Lenormand at the pre-match press conference.

De La Fuente said: "I am very satisfied with Lenormand. I think he is one of the best central defenders in Europe, very good. He is very competitive, focused and professional. We like him very much, and he did what I asked him to do." Since Lenormand obtained Spanish citizenship in the spring of 2023, the Spanish national team has not yet failed, and the former Real Sociedad player has played 25 games for the national team.

The only defeat was in the Nations League final against Portugal, but that defeat was decided via a penalty shootout, and according to FIFA statistics, the game was considered a draw for both sides.

In the Spanish national team, Fabian Ruiz maintains the record of being undefeated since his debut (39 games), and Lenormand is approaching the top three of this record. Fabian surpassed Julen Guerrero (unbeaten in 38 games), while Albiol was close behind in third place with 28 games unbeaten. If not calculated from the first appearance, Marchena ranks first with an unbeaten record of 57 games.

Lenormand's national team debut went directly to important events. On June 15, 2023, he made his first appearance on behalf of Spain in the Nations League semi-finals against Italy. Although he gave his opponent a penalty kick in the game, which led to Italy's equalizer, he ultimately helped the team win the championship and gained a stable starting position in future games.

Two and a half years later, Lenormand became the player with the most playing time for the Spanish national team. Despite missing the first two games and missing four due to a head injury suffered in last season's Madrid derby, he has played a total of 1,932 minutes under De La Fuente, surpassing Aymeric Laporte's 1,845 minutes, with only Unai Simon's 2,010 minutes surpassing both of them.

In addition to the games that he was unable to play, Lenorment only missed two games. One was suspended due to accumulation of yellow cards in the UEFA Nations League semi-finals against France, and the other was sitting on the bench for the entire friendly match against Colombia at the Olympic Stadium in London. Spain lost that game 0-1.

Lenormand faces suspension in the game against Bulgaria due to a yellow card received in the away game against Bulgaria. In 25 games with the national team, he received a total of 9 yellow cards, averaging 0.36 per game.

This frequency is much higher than the two players with the most yellow cards in the history of the Spanish national team: Busquets (25 yellow cards in 143 games, an average of 0.17) and Ramos (25 yellow cards in 180 games, an average of 0.17). In their first 25 games, Ramos received five yellow cards and Busquets received seven.