Three days after Spain's debut against Switzerland, Andrés Iniesta monopolizes all the attention of the Spanish team in the Potchefstroom rally. The recovery of his muscle ailment, which forced him to ask for the change before the break in the friendly against Poland, is on the right track and his feelings are the best. He feels fit to be in the game for La Roja's World Cup debut against Switzerland.
That day, Iniesta offered two interviews to televisions with rights. He attended Los Manolos, as Sports Cuatro was known at the time. Manu Carreño and Manolo Lama asked him if he was ready to play and Andrés replied: “It is not a matter of taking risks. The coach and I talk every day about how discomfort is evolving and the feelings are getting better. If I feel good, why not play?
In Canal Plus Liga the question and the answer was the same. But Andrés left no doubt that he was going to be from the game against Switzerland. When asked if it was a ballot for Del Bosque to line him up or not, Iniesta replied: “The ballot is to be fine and to be in a position to play.”
So much concern with Iniesta came because during the previous two seasons he had lost enough games due to muscle injuries. But what he felt in the last preparation match before the debut, the friendly against Poland held in Nueva Condomina on June 8, had no relation to the ailments he had suffered at Barcelona.
Days before the debut in a World Cup, nervousness increases among the players, the technicians and the special envoys look for topics for their daily chronicles. Iniesta's doubt occupied the pages of the newspapers and the radio and television minutes, as well as all the gatherings.
Andrés was the man of the day and AS wanted to have him on his cover. When he finished the interviews on the sets of Cuatro and Canal Plus, after the classic guard, the special envoy asked him to pose with a vuvuzela, that kind of trumpet that emits a deafening sound and that that day was already the symbol of the World Cup of South Africa and had created a debate on its use in stadiums.
“How do you want the photo?” Iniesta asked, affirmatively answering the request that had not been answered before entering the interviews. He posed with the vuvuzela and that exclusive photo with the phrases he had answered to Los Manolos and the friends of Plus were the cover of AS that opened a series that Iniesta himself closed almost a month later two days before the final. But we will revive that. The one from Fuentealbilla was the protagonist from the beginning of the concentration in Potchefstroom.