This ridiculous Spain XI minus Barcelona stars would still beat England

Setembro 26, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

You know your country produces serious talent when you could field an XI missing all players from the league champions and still probably be the favourite to win the World Cup.

That is the premise come up with by FotMob who posted to their social media a line up of the Spanish national team missing all of the Barcelona players and it is no surprise that it is still brilliant.

Four Barcelona players have been omitted under the new rules and the most notable drop in quality comes over on the right wing. New Liverpool signing Victor Munoz is very talented but he unfortunately has the very large shoes of Lamine Yamal to fill.

Even if the Barcelona winger did not have a stellar World Cup, he would still be one of the first names on the team sheet for any Spanish fan.

The other man who big shoes to fill is Arsenal’s Martin Zubimendi who is now being asked to provide the control that Rodri does. That’s former Ballon d’Or winner and World Cup Golden Ball winner Rodri.

The midfielder was not actually at Barca when he lifted the World Cup but his performances, coupled with his career to date, are why the Camp Nou club opted to pay Manchester City £65.4m for a player who had one year left on his deal.

Elsewhere in the midfield, utility man Mikel Merino has replaced Dani Olmo in the number 10 spot.

At the back, Dutch-born Spaniard Dean Huijsen gets a starting spot at the expense of Pau Cubarsi. Those two may well be the starting centre-backs of the future with a combined age of 40 between them.

Huijsen would then be one of two Madrid players in the back line alongside Marc Cucurella who was still a Chelsea player for the World Cup. Madrid meanwhile had no players in the Spanish squad for the first time.

The only non-Barcelona-related change is Nico Williams replacing Alex Baena after the Athletic Bilbao winger was injured for the World Cup.

While it is obviously missing the very best of the best, there’s no denying that this is still an extremely talented squad and would be good money to make it to the final once again if not going on to win it.

Good luck getting the ball off them.