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After a controversial squad selection, positive Covid tests, vaccination wranglings and the creation of a parallel training bubble, finally getting their Euro 2020 campaign under way against Sweden in Seville on Monday will probably come as light relief for Luis Enrique and his Spanish side.

Everything seemed to be going to plan, with Spain following protocols to the letter, until they got unlucky.

It all began when Sergio Busquets found out one of his relatives had tested positive for coronavirus. He had not been with that relative for five days beforehand but nonetheless was obliged to pass on the information to the appropriate authorities.

He played against Portugal in a friendly and every single test he gave during that period was negative. Eventually, after six days he tested positive. This was then followed by another positive test for Diego Llorente, which turned out to be a false positive – he has now returned to the squad – but nonetheless created more unwelcome drama.

Madrid’s media football lobby has always wielded immense power in Spanish football and the decision of Luis Enrique not only to overlook Sergio Ramos for the squad but also not to pick a single player from Real Madrid for the first time in living memory was always going to be a stick to beat the manager with.

Of course what really irritated the media was the lateness of the decision — Ramos was notified the evening before the squad was announced — which was deliberately timed to prevent them from devoting endless days and headlines arguing why the Spanish legend had to be included.

Despite being allowed to pick 26 players, Luis Enrique opted for just a 24-man squad, something else that drew the ire of the press, particularly when they felt it gave him the perfect opportunity to backtrack and in a better-late-than-never move, include Ramos after all.

Twenty-four, he said, was more than enough. In fact, in a press conference he gave last Thursday he joked that perhaps he should have settled on 23 because the more players you have the more chance you have of recording a positive test.

But while sections of the media endlessly huff and puff, they clearly confuse Luis Enrique for someone who actually gives a fig.

What he believes is what he has said all along, namely that Spain have a nucleus of 35-40 players of more or less the same calibre and on current form and fitness, Ramos is not one of them.

It is just as well he has that wider pool of talent because what we saw over the past fortnight was six players having to be called up alongside the Spanish Under-21 side in a parallel training bubble.

It was the under-21s — many of whom had been dragged in off the beach where they had been enjoying their holidays — who went out to face Lithuania in the final friendly before the tournament, clinically dispatching them 4-0, while the senior squad trained individually.

A full, official international days before a major tournament with a different manager, an entirely different team and a whole raft of debuts.

It has been a surreal arrangement, with the 11 under-21s and the six players called up at the last moment bused in every morning from a nearby hotel for training and unable to meet the rest of the group, while the original 22-man squad living at Las Rozas (the federation centre) were tested at 8AM every day in order that they could be cleared for training in the afternoon. — BBC Sport