Our strength is unity, says Spain's Pedri ahead of Euro 2024

Spain's dressing room is filled with leaders and their biggest asset at this month's European Championship will be the strong bonds between the players, midfielder Pedri said.

Spain's young and talented core of players have worked extensively with manager Luis de la Fuente, who was part of the national team's youth set-up between 2013-2022 before taking charge of the senior team.

"I think that these last few days we have talked about it, that the greatest asset we have is that we are a team, we are a family both on and off the field," Barcelona's Pedri told reporters on Tuesday.

"The leader is the team as a whole. There are many players that are captains that help us a lot, they act as leaders, but I think the big difference with all the teams is that we are a team and there is no leader who stands out from the rest."

Three-times champions Spain start their Euro 2024 campaign on June 15 against Croatia and also take on defending champions Italy and Albania in Group B.

"It's important to get off to a good start. But we've already seen that many teams have won a big tournament despite losing their first game," Pedri said.

"You don't have to be anxious about that game. It is clear that we are going to go out to win and we are not going to want to leave anything out on the pitch and above all, that, go out with everything.

"We are really looking forward to it, we are very young and we are really looking forward to it starting now."

Spain manager Luis de la Fuente had left Barcelona's 17-year-old defender Pau Cubarsi and midfielders Marcos Llorente and Aleix Garcia out of his 26-man squad .

Cubarsi's consistency and ability to play the ball out from the back made him one of the breakout players in LaLiga this season. Yet that was not enough to earn him a spot at Euro 2024 as De la Fuente decided to stick with a more seasoned group of centre backs in Robin Le Normand, Nacho Fernandez, Aymeric Laporte and Dani Vivian.