Sergio Ramos took one last look around the room and smiled, an invitation for others to join him. “This looks like a funeral parlour, and tomorrow the World Cup begins,” he said, grinning. Alongside him Fernando Hierro, Spain’s new manager, grinned too.

Together they got up and walked through the door, down the tunnel and out on to the pitch at the Fisht Stadium. Behind the stand, the sun set on the Black Sea; before it, Spain prepared for their opening night. Hierro stood watching as the ball flew around the rondo. Two and a half days before, still Spain’s sporting director, he had said he had no intention of coaching his country one day; the day after, his third in the job, he would lead them into the biggest tournament on earth.

Real Madrid accuse Spain of ‘absurd reaction’ over Lopetegui sacking Read more

Lead, or perhaps follow. “The idea is to change as little as possible,” Hierro said. Either way, at last this would be about football. “The sooner this starts the better,” Ramos said. It starts with a match that Fernando Santos, the Portugal manager, described as a classic, arguably the best of the first round. Yet even that had been eclipsed by two extraordinary days in which Real Madrid announced Julen Lopetegui would be their manager after the tournament and in which, the next morning, the Spanish Football Federation’s president, Luis Rubiales, reacted by sacking him. Two extraordinary days that were not over yet, either.

At one point, the Spanish press officer tried to direct the questions on to the match, as if that could be removed from what has happened. The Portugal press conference had also begun with questions about Spain. “I don’t think it will have a negative effect. Positive? Maybe,” João Moutinho said. “I think this will not alter anything in the way they play.”

As for Santos, the manager insisted: “Spain is a fantastic opponent. I don’t think they will change their game radically, they have a consolidated style going back many years, they will do the same things they did in qualifying. It’s 10 years of playing like this – 10 years. We’ll have Fernando Hierro [instead]. I’m not going to say good luck but I hope they have a great tournament.”

Hierro himself appeared to agree. “The plan is to respect the work that has been done the last two weeks, the idea from the last two years. We have total confidence in them to win the games. The work has been intense. And the reality is that we have not had time to change anything and we won’t.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fernando Hierro keeps an eye on his charges during a training session at Fisht Stadium in Sochi, where Spain will play Portugal on Friday. Photograph: Ronald Wittek/EPA

Ramos said: “We feel like Lopetegui is present; he is part of whatever happens at this World Cup.” He was a presence, that’s for sure. Spain were still out on the pitch preparing their opening game when, 3,500km away back home, Lopetegui appeared at the Bernabéu, unveiled as the new manager.

Lopetegui had left Spain’s training camp in a white van hours before; now the recriminations continued, this bizarre and damaging drama still going, Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, accusing the federation of not having allowed Lopetegui “to fight for the great dream he had”, another actor invited to offer his version of this story, another stage on which this drama was played out. “Surreal,” Lopetegui called it. At times, it felt like a stage too, applause greeting his responses.

The former Spain manager said that the previous day had been “the saddest day of my life since my mother died”. As he said so, his voice broke and tears appeared in his eyes. “But this is the happiest of my life,” he added. That was met with applause too. And when asked whether he would have liked to have done things differently, he said: “I would have liked Rubiales to have done differently,” he said. That was met with laughter and when he insisted he would support the team he had led “like the rest of Spain” there was applause. “I am convinced they can win the World Cup,” he said.

Back in Russia, that was the message too. This should not change anything, they insisted. Gerard Piqué was drawing on the example of Michigan in 1989, the basketball team whose coach, Bill Frieder, announced that he was leaving for Arizona State at the end of the season. Instead, he was sacked immediately and his assistant, Steven Fisher, took them to the NCAA title. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Piqué said.

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Here, before the media, the message was delivered mostly by Ramos; the captain spoke more than the coach, hurriedly presented the day before. These had been “delicate days”, Ramos admitted but the World Cup would be the focus now – or at least that is what they hoped.

“We had to turn the page as soon as possible,” the defender said. “Spain has to be above any name. Who better than Fernando to take over from Julen? It’s an honour that he is alongside me. We have known him a long time and he was the ideal person. It shouldn’t affect us at all for the tournament.”

Asked whether he and other players had tried to convince the federation to stick with Lopetegui, Ramos’s answer sounded like a yes. “That’s not something to concern us now,” he said. “It is not a decision for us; the only way we can do anything is on the pitch. We would prefer not to talk about it any more.

“There is no split in the squad at all. We’re all our mother’s sons, of course, but the collective idea is the same for all of us: go for the World Cup. And nothing and no one is going to change that. We have to leave everything [else] to one side. I can assure you that the problems are gone. The sooner this starts the better.” On Friday it does.