Last week, when Ander Herrera was called up as an injury replacement for Spain, it was revealed that he’d been in Madrid and was therefore able to make his way to Spain’s training camp in under an hour, worried that someone else may beat him to it.
It wasn’t the only rush during Spain’s international break, and Nacho Monreal’s journey makes Herrera’s sound rather mild. The Arsenal defender was also called up, for the first time since 2013, but by this time Spain were on their way to Albania and needed the player to meet them there.
That led to Monreal flying from London to Rome, and then on from Rome to Tirana. However, Albania weren’t playing in their capital city and a car picked up Monreal in the city to take him to Shkoder.
There he arrived, 100km away from Tirana, at the Grand Hotel Shokder at 2am in the morning on Saturday. Some rest, and the briefest of training and tactical updates, saw Monreal play in Spain’s victory on Sunday.
Hopefully they found him a place on the plane home.
