When Lionel Scaloni walked into a classroom in New Jersey in 2017, he was not sure what came next. His playing career had ended a few years earlier, and football felt distant. So he signed up to study for his Uefa Pro Licence — the highest coaching qualification in European football — at the Spanish football federation. That decision would change everything.
His teacher was Luis de la Fuente, a quiet man from Haro, a small town in Spain's wine country famous for the Batalla del Vino, where thousands dress in white and splash each other with red wine every year. De la Fuente was still coaching Spain's Under-19 national team at the time, but he was also there to teach the technique module. Scaloni, the former Argentina defender, sat in his seat and learned.
Scaloni finished the course with one of the best marks in his class. He has said since that De la Fuente gave him and his classmates "an enormous hand." That classroom connection stuck.
Now they meet as enemies. On Sunday, Scaloni's Argentina will face De la Fuente's Spain in the World Cup final in Miami. One will win. One will lose. But the bond between them, built in that New Jersey classroom, will remain.
Neither man has ever managed a top-flight club game. Scaloni spent his playing days at clubs like Deportivo La Coruna and West Ham United, making over 200 appearances. De la Fuente, 65, retired as a player in 1994 and spent years drifting away from football after being sacked by Deportivo Alaves in 2011. He almost gave up entirely. But he saw a newspaper ad for a youth coaching job with the Spanish federation, called a friend, and got a three-month contract to coach the Under-19s.
From there, something clicked. He led that team to the European Championship, then won it the following year with players like Rodri, Unai Simon, and Mikel Merino — all of them now stars on Spain's senior team. He has known these players for a decade, through youth camps and family dinners. In 2022, he took over as Spain's head coach.
Scaloni's path looked different. He grew up on a farm in Pujato, a small town near Rosario, Argentina, where his family still grows maize, wheat, and soy. He won the Under-20 World Cup in Malaysia in 1997 alongside Walter Samuel and Pablo Aimar — both now his assistant coaches on Argentina's bench. But retirement hit him hard. He settled in Mallorca with his wife and two young children and struggled to find his next chapter.
The classroom in New Jersey gave him one.
"There is much more that unites us than divides us," De la Fuente said recently. They share a faith in sacrifice, humility, and family. For De la Fuente, family is the foundation of everything — his son Alberto works on Spain's coaching staff. For Scaloni, it is the dressing room culture he grew up in, where senior players carry authority and coaches listen.
Both have built national teams that feel like families. Both are 90 minutes from the biggest prize in football. And both will always share that classroom moment in New Jersey — teacher and student, now rivals, forever linked.