Who is the woman who listens to the anthem with Luis Enrique?

Looking for a soccer simile, it could be said that Nuria Martínez Navas is the Busquets of the Spanish Federation. A pivot through which all the balls pass. She receives and distributes them diligently, and with a smile, analyzing the most appropriate passing lanes. Her to-do list is kilometric, and she is even more amplified when a tournament like a World Cup arrives. She is the link between the Spanish Federation (RFEF) and FIFA and is also in charge of managing all the team’s needs, both sports and logistics. She takes care of the accreditations, the transfers, that the training camps meet minimum requirements…

He has traveled to Qatar once a month in the last year to set up the entire operation that the selection was going to find. Nine previous trips that also included working days with the International Federation and the rest of the team managers of the 32 classified. He visited venues and training camps until he found the option that best suited the needs of Spain, in this case Qatar University. From there he also supervised the assembly and preparation of the complex that now houses Luis Enrique’s team.

In addition, he is responsible for the player’s files, notifying discards, uploading the lineups to the official application… a succession of chores that force him to live glued to an ‘excel’ and a calendar full of cross-outs and delivery dates . “You have to have everything very controlled, but luckily I have a photographic memory and I am quite organized,” she says.

Nuria joined the Federation in June 2021, just before the start of the Euro Cup. In that tournament he learned from within all the functions that he was going to assume, and in October he already made his debut as a team manager, what was previously known as a delegate. “Now everything has evolved and has been computerized,” he says.

Its trajectory reflects its off-road character. It is, as she herself says, “a restless ass.” She studied Journalism and a Master’s in International Conflicts because she wanted to be a war correspondent, although her other passion ended up winning that pulse. “I really like playing sports, I’ve done it all my life,” she explains as she recalls her stage in the Estudiantes youth academy. From editor in the ‘Diario AS’ she jumped to the Spanish Basketball Federation as director of the President’s Cabinet. There she lived her first World Cup with an unbeatable result, because Spain was champion in Saitama. Hence, she now dreams of a double that could be unprecedented.

Going through women’s football

Luis Rubiales met her at the AFE, where she was the women’s soccer coordinator. But before the RFEF president recruited her, she still had time to go through Atlético de Madrid, where she was director of Institutional Relations.

A lover of reading and movies, the best surprise her people can give her is to take her on a culinary experience. She loves music in general, especially Pearl Jam. And in her suitcase to Doha there is no shortage of the iPad, with which she watches series and movies, and a lot of sports clothes, although also street clothes. “I don’t want to see myself in a tracksuit all day. I don’t know if I’ll use it, but at least I put on my dress and heels in my room », she confesses.

He is aware of the interest that his image arouses every time they focus on the Spanish bench. “In the networks I am the blonde who appears next to Luis Enrique,” she says with a laugh. “I enjoy my work every day,” she says to top it all off. “I am a positive and happy person and there is not a single day in which I do not laugh at anything,” she defines herself.