38-year-old Jesus Navas will mark Kylian Mbappe at Euro 2024 – he might just win (2024)

The generation gap on Spain’s right flank has just grown bigger. Lamine Yamal has spent the tournament passing his school exams and footballing tests, operating in front of a man twice his age, in Dani Carvajal. Yet the six-time Champions League winner was suspended for the Euro 2024 semi-final even before he brought his quarter-final to a slightly premature end, rugby-tackling Jamal Musiala to collect his second yellow card deep into extra time.

And so the reserve right-back, who will presumably be parachuted in to face France, whose role will involve racing Kylian Mbappe, is a player who had won the Uefa Cup twice before Yamal was born. One Jesus turned water into wine. The temptation is to think that another may need a still greater miracle to outsprint Mbappe. Jesus Navas, after all, is closer in age to perennial early 90s Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain than he is to Yamal.

But, 21 seasons into his senior career, Navas has a certain timelessness. There are few 38-year-olds whose attributes begin with speed, but his arguably do. He has retained a slim physique that suggests he has zero per cent body fat. As times have changed, Navas hasn’t. He has moved from right wing to right-back yet remains essentially the same.

He is a man who has spent two decades running quickly in straight lines up and down the right flank (which, actually, could serve as excellent preparation for halting Mbappe). Shifting him into defence – like many things, a move Pep Guardiola introduced – may have extended Navas’s career.

It also scarcely came at a cost. The Navas paradox was that he had helped to set up the winning goal in a World Cup but was a wholehearted, fast winger who presented virtually no goal threat. Now he hasn’t scored in the 2020s: when he left Manchester City, however, he had scored none of their last 275 league goals.

His crossing can be famously inaccurate; but some of his productivity stems from an ability to find opponents in their own box. Sevilla’s goal in the 2023 Europa League final came from a Navas cross that Gianluca Mancini turned into his own net.

Spain’s goal in the 2010 World Cup final, giving global domination to the team but also the ethos of tiki-taka, stemmed from a man who was the antithesis of it. While Spain passed sideways, Navas ran forwards. Admittedly, he lost the ball, but it led, indirectly, to Cesc Fabregas releasing Andres Iniesta to score. Navas was a man out of time then: when Spain’s wingers were men with midfielders’ skillsets, like Iniesta and David Silva. His style of play is more suited to the current regime, when Luis de la Fuente plays genuine wingers with real pace. Now, though, he is a full-back.

And an anomaly. Fourteen years on from Spain’s greatest footballing day, he is the one World Cup winner in the squad. He has not been a constant for Spain: one spell of international exile lasted five-and-a-half years, another three. Navas has not changed; he has just veered in and out of favour.

He may have owed a recall to Cesar Azpilicueta’s omission a couple of years ago, to the perception the former Chelsea captain was getting too old. Except that Navas is almost four years older. He has become Spain’s oldest player. A few months from his 39th birthday, he has already captained them in Euro 2024 against Albania.

But that was in a reserve team. Now he will be promoted to the senior side as Spain seek to reach a first major final in a dozen years, as his immediate opponent is arguably the best player in the world, possibly the fastest and definitely 13 years his junior. Logically, Navas stands little chance, especially as Spain’s right-sided centre-back, Robin Le Normand, is also suspended. Perhaps Mbappe’s broken nose, his trouble breathing, his mask and lack of form will make the contest more equal.

But it is a safe assumption that the Frenchman, whatever his notional position, will look to burst into the channel between Navas and the central defender, to exploit any space behind him, to isolate him one on one. Navas will retire at the end of the calendar year; there may be moments when he wishes he had fast-tracked it. Lose and this will almost certainly be his final international. Win and it could be too, with Carvajal eligible to return for the final.

He will go out a Sevilla hero; the club’s greatest legend, according to president Jose Maria del Nido Carrasco. He will play for free until December, adding to his record 689 games, taking up a lifetime contract then. A player who suffered from homesickness in his youth is so beloved there that arrivals at Seville airport have been greeted with a lifesize cardboard cutout of Navas holding the Europa League trophy.

Should he win his duel with Mbappe, should Spain go on to triumph in Berlin, there is a case for adding one of him with the Euro 2024 silverware. Because in Munich, Spain’s hopes will rest with Jesus.

Spain vs France kicks off at 8pm, coverage is on BBC One