Spain vs England preview: Why Thiago Alcantara is now heartbeat of Spanish side

Thiago was sold to Bayern for just £12m

(2015 Getty Images)

Spain’s ability to win a third consecutive European Championship next summer will depend a great deal on a player who could easily have ended up playing for Brazil – and, no, that’s not a reference to Diego Costa.

Thiago Alcantara is the son of the Brazilian midfielder Mazinho, who played in the 1994 World Cup final for Brazil. He came to Spain as a boy when his father joined Celta Vigo and pledged allegiance to his new home.

The Spanish were grateful in 2011 when he, alongside David De Gea and Juan Mata, helped them win the Under-21 European Championship, scoring in the 2-0 win over Switzerland in Denmark. And gratitude gave way to mouthwatering anticipation of what he might go on to achieve when in 2013 he repeated the feat, this time scoring a first-half hat-trick in a 4-2 win over Italy in Jerusalem. De Gea was again a team-mate, as were Atletico Madrid’s Koke and Juventus’s Alvaro Morata, who could also feature tonight.

De Gea believed Thiago was joining him at Old Trafford after that tournament, so much so that he wrote “see you in Manchester” on the match ball Thiago kept from the final. But when he left Barcelona he went to Bayern Munich instead.

There were times coming up through the ranks at Barcelona when coaches at the club doubted Thiago’s discipline. Growing up around footballers had made him self-confident and not afraid to express himself on the pitch.

“You go to your dad’s training session,” he told The Independent in an interview at the end of last season, “and then you go home in the front room, rearrange the furniture and practise what you’ve seen. They had training cones, I had chairs...

“Then when you enter into a dressing room as a young player and there’s Deco and Ronaldinho the impact on you is not as great.”

Most people believed Pep Guardiola shared this view that Thiago was too self-assured for his own good but evidently he did not. Guardiola signed him and it was Bayern Munich’s gain and United and Barça’s considerable loss. If he lines up tonight alongside Sergi Busquets and Andres Iniesta for Spain, Barça supporters will be reminded of the midfield that might have been had the club not set his buyout clause at just €17m (£12m).

Three injuries to the cruciate ligaments in his knees slowed down his progress but now he is thriving again and, with Spain braced for their first tournament without Xavi, there is a feeling that his time has come.

Much was expected of that Under-21 group that won two tournaments either side of the senior side’s European Championship victory in 2012. Some, such as Manchester United’s Ander Herrera, seem to have been forgotten by Vicente Del Bosque.

Others such as midfielder Koke and Morata are still developing, with the latter getting ever closer to a first-team place because of Costa’s current return of one goal in nine games for Spain and a dismal run with Chelsea.

Mata, who starred in the first of those two Under-21 Championship wins, is now 27 and while he will contest a starting place alongside fellow Premier League stars, Manchester City’s David Silva and Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla, no one believes he can carry the team the way Xavi did.

It is Thiago that has that extra something special. Del Bosque has a habit of picking two completely different sides for friendly double-headers so every squad member plays. The boy with the Brazilian World Cup-winning dad, raised by Barça and now being schooled by Pep at Bayern, could face England or Belgium. What no one doubts is that if he’s fit next summer when Spain kick off their Euro 2016 campaign, he will be at the heart of the team.