What is going on with Álvaro Morata getting hated on/booed/threatened by fans of the Spanish national football team?

And specifically today, he missed their last penalty in a shoot out against Italy, leading to them missing out on the Euro final. Despite making the equalising goal earlier in the match and not being the only player to miss, most anger is being directed toward him for the loss.

Thanks! I wasn't really familiar with the current spanish team before the euros this year. Last time I watched a similar tournament Iker Casillas was still goalie. He scored a lot so I assumed he was one of their better players.

And even if he isn't, threatening and harassing him for a low performance is vile.. if he really was that bad, in a football nation like Spain surely someone else would've taken his spot already?

This comment is very accurate, but as a Spaniard who has followed the team, a couple things could be added:

TL/DR: Bad performance, media campaign in his favour, bad attitude towards the fans. He performed bad but still acted arrogant and played the victim.

• The selection of players called to the national team was a little controversial. For example, Iago Aspas has been the best Spanish striker in the league consistently (on pair with Gerard Moreno) and he wasn't even called. Morata (who is generally considered as pretty mediocre and overrated) was not only called but also in the starting XI. This surprised a lot of us in the first match who expected Moreno to be our main striker, and he performed horribly. We got a draw against Sweden and didn't play a good match.

• A lot of people criticised him for his bad performance, and in response media held a huge campaign in his favour (it's said that his father is a big fish in one of the main media groups in Spain, but I don't know about that). Anyway, this campaign was ridiculous: on one hand, Morata was praised for absolutely anything he did by narrators and journalists to the point that it became a meme. On the other hand, media literally insulted fans that criticized Morata, calling them "stupids".

• Morata didn't accept any criticism and antagonized fans: after a horrible performance against Poland, some journalist asked him about fans criticising him and he just said "let them talk, I don't care what people says, talking is free in this country". Previous to this he also said "fans criticized Torres too, so you can imagine their intellectual level".

• After another bad performance against Slovakia (despite the team winning 5-0) he played a solid match against Croatia and Switzerland (nothing crazy, but a good match nonetheless). People calmed down since we got further than expected and we started to dream about the trophy. However, yesterday he missed the last penalty and everything just came to the surface again.

Sorry for the terribly long comment. In conclusion, I'd say that, on one hand he performed badly and didn't care, acted as an arrogant prick, and antagonized the fans (who have suffered a lot because Covid hit us really hard). On the other hand, media held this ridiculous campaign praising him and insulting his detractors.

As a striker, his scoring record is mediocre and doesn’t seem to justify the two times he’s moved for fees in the region of £60m or the £10m per season Juventus are paying to loan him, offset against another eventual £55m fee.

On the same note how when ever Argentina loses anything, everyone just blames Messi.