Paraguay - Spain, Quick preview

I am writing this righ before the game. Brazil and Argentina are gone. In both cases, their coaches are to be blamed. If today Del Bosque uses properly his human resources, Spain should be in the semifinals next week.


In an interview, the Spanish spy in charge of watching Paraguay quite a wrong description: "Paraguay is like Chile, but 15 yards backed-up". How weird. Paraguay does not press intensely all over the field. Paraguay does not draw the off-side line really far away from its goalie. Paraguay does not play at 100 miles per hour. Any resemblance to Chile is mere coincidence.

Paraguay will play against Spain in a very similar way than Switzerland and the United States played Spain. It will back-up, certainly, will not press high-up, but wait until Spain moves forward, and will hope for a good and lonely counter-attack or a strategy play. Otherwise, it will be happy to make it into the extra time, when both teams will be tired and the game will become more open.

With teams like this, Del Bosque has not chosen the right strategy yet. Playing wings and crossing dozens of balls to the box was never effective. It is true that Paraguay is a team of short people, so it may work out this time. However, I have held in this blog that there area better stategies than that. Accumulating attacking miedfielders would be a much better idea. We'll what Del Bosque decides.