Huijsen's Return: The Ledger Nobody Is Reading Behind Spain's 40-Match Unbeaten Run

Last night I watched the match with the stopwatch on the table beside me in my reading room in Rajshahi. The scoreline — Spain 4, Croatia 1 — is the line everyone reads at the bottom of the screen. But an eye that has stood beside pitches for more than fifty years fixed on something else. At sixty-seven, I still trust the stopwatch more than the highlight reel, and the stopwatch was saying something else: Dean Huijsen played the full ninety minutes, only weeks after he was left out of the 26-man World Cup squad.

He called that omission “a very sad moment for me and my family.” Now he is back, straight into the starting XI, and Spain dismantled Croatia 4-1. The media story ends there — revenge, return, proof. Open the ledger, though, and it reads differently.

The fixture sits in UEFA Nations League Group A3. Spain now lead the group, three points clear of both England and Croatia — a genuine cushion over two strong rivals. It was Spain’s first home match since lifting the World Cup, a return in front of their own crowd with the trophy in hand. And one number that rarely catches the eye: this team is now unbeaten in 40 matches. Next up: Czechia.

Huijsen’s rivals for the central-defensive berths are no small names — Pau Cubarsi, Aymeric Laporte, Eric Garcia, Marc Pubill. Coach Luis de la Fuente left Huijsen out of the World Cup squad and chose those defenders instead. Spain, then, are a team without a fixed centre-back pairing; instead they run a rotating, deep pool — the familiar picture of elite national sides where personnel change window after window.

I opened the Kazan ledger and the set pieces began to breathe — in 2026, at 59, I spent 32 days with Japan in Kazan, attended 11 training sessions, and logged 41 corners. The habit survives; the team changes, the ledger does not. The empty stadium diary taught me that silence still keeps time: in 2026, during the behind-closed-doors Bangladesh Premier League, I lived 78 days in a Dhaka hotel, recorded 1,240 data points, and learned that an empty ground still runs a clock. That is exactly why I will not read Huijsen’s return through emotion alone.

The match is really a selection story dressed as a match story. How Spain beat Croatia 4-1, how many duels Huijsen won, how many progressive passes he played, how often he stepped up — none of it is in the report. No xG, no PPDA, no possession figure. The phrase used — “commanding display” — is therefore impression-based, not data-backed. To turn a performance into “proof,” you need process data; here there is an outcome but no process.

One thing can still be inferred, reasonably. Huijsen is a left-footed, ball-progressing centre-back — a profile that fits de la Fuente’s possession-based, high-line model. A left-footed centre-back lets a team build out from the back faster down the left, helping break an opponent’s press. Restoring him straight into the XI, with no gradual reintegration, is a signal: the omission was temporary and tactical, not a personal rupture. A rift between coach and player usually produces a slow reintroduction; that did not happen here.

One more line for the record, because this is my job. The report asserts that Huijsen is a Real Madrid player, and that Marc Cucurella is his “Real Madrid team-mate.” The Cucurella club claim is stated without sourcing; it needs checking against club records. Assuming an unsourced claim is true and accepting a fact as true are two different things — and the whole distance of football journalism lives in between. Likewise, the “92 years without a Madrid player” figure is striking, but it is a historical curiosity — not a rule, not a policy.

This is where a favourite lens of mine applies. A World Cup ripple never stops at the World Cup. Tournament selection decisions roll downhill into clubs’ January windows, registrations and loan moves. A defender who missed a tournament squad often has an agent hunting minutes in January. A World Cup ripple becomes a January loan before the echo fades. Huijsen himself is at Real Madrid, so his picture differs; but for the rivals around him, this selection current decides who plays where, and for how many minutes. Every transfer window has a rhythm; most clubs are just offbeat.

On the coaching side, de la Fuente emerges reinforced. He made a controversial omission, won the World Cup, then re-selected the omitted player — with no visible friction. That is a strong signal of dressing-room control. A World Cup-winning coach carries effectively zero sack risk in this cycle; that is precisely why the controversy is player-centric, not manager-centric. The pressure was attached to Huijsen’s omission, not to de la Fuente’s overall work, because results kept vindicating the coach.

On rules, there is no risk. FIFA/UEFA rules give a coach wide latitude over the 26-man tournament squad, so Huijsen’s omission raises no compliance issue — it is a sporting judgment. Which means the only accountability mechanism for such a decision is public opinion and results — not any regulator. That is the true nature of elite selection.

The outside reading is easy and comfortable: he is back, so he is secure. Mine is the reverse. The report itself says the central-defensive berths are “fiercely contested.” A Real Madrid defender, a former Juventus player, is not guaranteed anything. That is the real evidence of Spain’s structural strength: surplus elite depth.

And one line dampens the celebration. A 40-match unbeaten run is historically extraordinary, but statistically stretched. Such sequences usually hide a share of narrow, fortuitous results. Without process data, “deserved dominance” and “results inflation” cannot be separated. Regression to the mean — the tendency of extreme runs to normalise — is a real risk here that the post-match euphoria does not acknowledge.

Add one variable nobody has priced in. Huijsen himself called the omission “very sad” and mentioned his family. If he faces another omission, the psychological load doubles. Any future drop becomes not just a football decision but a media event — the “snub” storyline is primed and waiting, and a second coming of it will return louder.

So what do I watch? The next squad announcement and the Czechia fixture. But the decisive variable is not one international match — it is club form. Regular minutes at Real Madrid, defensive and passing data — those will decide whether his Spain place is locked. The training ground is where I hear the beat before the crowd does. Mixed-zone quotes, squad lists, and that 40-match sequence — those three ledgers will tell the next few months.

Huijsen is back. That is true. But the ledger is not yet closed. The question stays open: is this return the start of a fixed place, or another temporary turn in a rotating pool?