Holland 0 - Spain 1, Spain World Cup Champion

Spain, the perennial underperformer, won the World Cup of 2010, and this blogger cannot be any happier. I started this blog in the hope that Spain would make it far into the tournament for the first time in the history of the World Cup. Winning the tournament was more of a dream than a hope. This competition is extremely difficult to win. There are too many variables at play, too many good teams in the tournament to call any of them a sure winner from the start.

There were strong reasons for believing that the odds were in Spain's favor this time, though. Spain was the European Champion at the time, and a very deserving, very dominant one. Most importantly, Spain had developed in the last few years a very effective and clearly-defined style, a pretty unique way of playing football particularly fit for its best players. Under this style, Spain had only lost 1 game in the last four years before the World Cup started.

In this blog I have done my best to explain this Spanish style of playing football, and to point out the current Spanish coach's mixed feelings about it. Keeping in mind these mixed feelings of the Spanish coach, Vicente Del Bosque, let's review the final game of the Word Cup in South Africa 2010.

The Netherlands played the strategy that I had anticipated in the Spanish version of this blog--it attempted to shortcut the flow of the Spanish passing game by constantly fouling the Spaniards, and then to counterattack using Robben's speed runs. The Dutch constant fouling did not come up as a surprise. Before the final game, Holland had already received 15 yellow cards through the World Cup--Spain had received 3. Van Marwjik, the Dutch coach, was very open about his will to winning this tournament whatever it took. What no one could have anticipated was the degree of violence that the Dutch would deploy, and the degree of tolerance that the English referee, Howard Webb, would exercise. I must add, nevertheless, that the officiating was almost impecable in all other respects.

Let me say a word about English tradition of excellent officiating. It is probably the strongest virtue of English officiating that the English refs manage rough actions in a very civilized way, calming down the players through dialogue, verbal warnings, and the occasional yellow card, without the need to kick players out of the game. Unfortunately, this officiating technique only works when rough actions are the colateral result of honest fair play, the non-intentional consequence of a straightforward yet exessively agressive fight for the ball. In this case, the Dutch violence was intentional and systematic. This was a strategy, as several Dutch players shamelessly acknowledged after the game. No referee's dialoguing and warning was going to calm it down, and yellow cards were not going to do the trick either unless they would be followed by a second yellow at some point down the road. The Dutch central striker, Robbie van Persie, acknowledged a few weeks after the game that they had studied Howard Webb, who officiates in the same league where van Persie plays, the English League. They had an educated guess that Webb would be very reluctant to "spoil" his performance in the most important game of his career by showing an early red card. So they could be confident in their agressively tackling the Spainards. It is nevertheless really hard to understand why De Jong was not shown a red card for this extreme brutality in the 27th minute of the game--the referee may not have had a clear vision of it, but his assistants must have had it:



It was a real shame. The poor administration of red cards effectively prevented the Spanish game to flow, and made for a very tense, yet not very high quality game, as goal opportunities could only come up sparsely. Spain, and fair play, were really close to get beat. It is no surprise that the international press would trash the Dutch violence unanimously the day after.



And then again, just look at where Van Bommel is directing his cleats to and where the ball is:



This was the Dutch strategy--conservative, violent, sad. It was also completely out out character. A true betrayal to the tradition of Dutch stylish and fair play football. It is not just my opinion and the unanimous opinion of the international press. Van Marwjik's Holland was also heavily critized after the game by the best Dutch player in history, Johan Cruyff, and also by Ruud Gullit, another Dutch legend. They were saddened by the ultra-conservative Dutch strategy. Ball possession was 37,1% for Holland, 62,9% for Spain. Holland had a similar percentage as Mourinho's Inter Milan when it beat Barcelona in the semifinals of the Champions League this year. And yet, Inter Milan played an ultra-defensive yet fair play game. Holland did not. Big difference, which both Dutch former players also embarrasingly pointed out.

As for the Spaniards, they found a very hard time to cut through the Dutch defensive lines. Besides the Dutch defensive roughness and discipline, the Spanish coach is also to be blamed for this. He played a very conservative game, fearful of the Duth counterattacks, and his conservatism made it much harder for the Spaniards to score sooner.

The most important factors that contributed to the victory of Spain were defensive factors--Casillas saves against Robben, Puyol's experience to interfere with Robben without pulling him down to the ground, thus avoiding being sent to take a shower, Capdevilla's execellent and quiet job against Robben through the entire game, Pique's brilliant consistency, the excellent off-side line (congrats to the entire defensive line, and congrats to Del Bosque too), Busquets- the-octopus constant steals (this octopus truly made a difference), Xabi Alonso's helping job, and the circus-quality football of Xavi Hernandez and Iniesta to avoid loosing the ball under the tough Dutch pressure. It was remarkable the lack of determinant attacking factors going for Spain except for a huge one-Fabregas substituting Alonso at the 85min.

The game went through 4 very distinct phases.

PHASE 1: Up to the 11th minute. Spain had 3 very clear chances to score, one every three minutes, and overwhelmingly dominated the ball possession.

PHASE 2: Between minutes 11h and 59th. Spanish offensive game was effectively neutralized by Holland. No scoring opportunities for either team. Spain kept in full control of the ball possession, but was unable to cross the Dutch defensive lines in the midfield.

PHASE 3: Between minutes 59th and 85th, that is, between the entry of Navas and the entry of Fábregas. Spain lost the full control over the ball possession, and the game opened up. Holland stole more balls, and created the clearest scoring opportunities in the game. Spain had also a very clear chance to score during this phase.

PHASE 4: between the 85th minute and the end of the game. Ás soon as Fábregas replaced Alonso in the 85th minute, the game changed dramatically. Spain got back the overwhelming control over the ball possession, and for the first time in the game, it cut through the Dutch defensive midfield lines and got scoring opportunities consistently. Through this phase, Spain enjoyed 5 clear scoring chances before actually scoring. Holland enjoyed only one, in a corner kick.

ANALYSIS

The Dutch strategy was not hard to anticipate. Del Bosque and his technical team were well aware of it long time in advance. Was Del Bosque's strategy the best fit to overcome the Dutch plan? I do not think so.

Most peoploe think that winner coach's strategy should never be argued against. This is the approach taken by the Spanish press, and also by most of the International press. I think, on the contrary, that Spain beat Holland inspite of the Spanish coach, who played with fire most of the game and made some bad decissions that put the Spanish team highly at risk of losing it. Only five minutes to the end of the game, Del Bosque did the right thing. By bringing in Fábregas for Alonso, he completely changed the game, at last.

He had made the very same substitution against Paraguay with identical results. The game also changed dramatically in favor of Spain. It leaves us wondering what would have happened had Spain played with this line-up from the start in most games, including the big final.

I must grant that Spain could have scored in the first eleven minutes of the game, and then we would be talking now about a high-score, a very open game, etc. Nevertheless, the fact that Spain only shot four times against the Dutch goalie in the first half still feels much too conservative, and a big waste of attacking potential on the Spanish side.

The scarcity of scoring opportunities for Spain must be seen, therefore, as the result of Del Bosque´s extra-cautious strategy. Spain would attack only with 3 players agasint 7, sometimes 9 Dutch players in the midfield and defense. All the other Spaniards would move forward only behind the ball, never in front of it. Only Ramos and Xavi Hernández would ocasionally move forward to help out. Using such a conservative approach, scoring became extremely hard for the Spaniards, even more so when the Dutch strategy was even more conservative, having very populated and rough midfield and defensinve lines.

After 50 long minutes of Spain not getting even close to score (much less Holland), Del Bosque made his second mistake of the night-the first one being his conservatism-, i.e., replacing Pedro for Navas. Del Bosque explained after the game that he wanted young Navas to attack old Van Bronkhorst, who was 35 years old. Gee, this sounds like a small team coach from some teenage league. The Dutch coach ordered a striker, Kuyt, to help out Van Bronkhorst and that was the end of the story for Navas. It was a no brainer.

As Spain lost a guy in the midfield, hovever, ball posession became harder and harder for the Spaniards. Holland started to steal some balls for the first time in the game, and then the most clear scoring opportunities for Robben showed up. He missed both of them, both to miracolous saves by Casillas. By bringing Navas into the game, Del Bosque had been close to screwing the whole thing up.

Five minutes to the end, at the 85th minute, Del Bosque made what must have felt to him like a really bold move. He replaced Alonso for Fábregas, a static midfielder who likes to play closer to the defensive line for a dynamic midfielder who likes to go back and forth and to frequently step into the opponent's box. Xavi Hernández and Iniesta finally found a partner much closer to them, and a really dynamic one, who would show up whenever they needed help. Spain claimed back the overwhelming ball posession, and scoring opportunities started to pour over the Dutch goalie. Defensively, Spain had also greatly improved. More ball posession for Spain meant less scoring opportunities for Holland. In fact, Holland only enjoyed one more scoring opportunity-a header in a corner-kick that went really far off the goal. That was it for Holland from the 85th minute until the end of the game in the 120th minute. Spain could have scored five times in the same period of time, and all these opportunities arrived after skilfull passing combinations with Fábregas as one of the main actors.

After the game Del Bosque explained how hard it was for him to bring Fábregas in. He confessed that he feared the loss of height in the midfield! Seriously, this is what he said in the post-game press conference. Mind you that Alonso and Fábregas are just 3 centimeters apart. But come on, even if they were 20 centimeters apart! That should be the last consideration when ball posession and attacking power is at stake! Does Del Bosque prefer to defend by having the ball of by having taller players? To me it is rather depressing to confirm that he is still torn between these options. His mixed feelings about the system that he inherited from Luis Aragonés remained very alive until the very last game of the World Cup.

When Spain performs in the right way, by constantly rotating positions, as it happened when Fábregas entered the game, any player can end up scoring. The name of the scorers should be just an anecdote. In such circumstances the real scorer is the team, not an individual person. However, there was a lot of poetic justice in the fact that the scorer of the winning goal was Iniesta, who happened to be the most fouled player in the game, and a midfielder, and also the shortest player on the field.

End of the analysis. The last few lines of this last post should be praising and celebrating lines. All lovers of collective, combinative, skilfull and attacking football must be very grateful to the entire Spanish team, Del Bosque included. Spain has an exceptional group of professionals, with an outstanding degree of commitment, mental strength and football quality. This group won the second major international championship in a row, the biggest one in the history of Spanish football, and it was not by accident. Spain is a very deserving World Champion. Congratulations, and thank you very much indeed.

Holland - Spain, Preview

Spain football must be very grateful to Holland. Spain's passing game is the direct heritage of the Dutch national team in the seventies. You can check out in this blog the full history and a few videos about all this in a previous entry "A Few Acknowledgments for Associative Football". The best player of that Dutch team in the seventies, Johan Cruyff, played and coached in Spain for years, and stayed in Spain after he retired. He planted the seed that today is flourishing. The funny thing is that he was not really a guy who would pass the ball much. Quite on the contrary, he was a pretty selfish dribbler. And yet, he became as a coach an utmost advocate of a very collective, very associative, very offensive way of playing football, based on constantly passing the ball. It was also Cruyff who strongly influenced the playing style of the most reputed Dutch football school, Ajax of Amsterdam's. Most of the Dutch players in this World Cup were raised in it, or else they grew up admiring it. Thus the Dutch also were raised in a very similar way of playing football. A game between Holland and Spain will be, therefore, a final game where the master meets the disciple.

The first factor in this final game will be how well both teams know each other. The best Dutch players have been team mates with the Spaniards in either Barcelona (Van Bronkhorst, Van Bommel) or Real Madrid (Robben, Sneijder, Huntelaar); then Van Persie and Fábregas are team mates at Arsenal; and Torres, Reina, Alonso and Arbeloa have been team mates with Kuyt at Liverpool. Here I think that Spain has an advantage. The Spanish goalie and right wing defender have shared team and training sessions with the best scorers in this World Cup for Holland, Robben and Sneijer, and the Spanish defensive line has already successfully played against them all and beat them consistently. The Dutch defense lacks such an experience. Except for Van Bronkhorst and Van Bommel, Dutch midfielders and defenders are pretty new at playing against the Spaniards and their kind of football.

It will be very interesting to see what strategy both teams will deploy. I expect, or to better say, I strongly hope that Del Bosque will play again a fifth man as a forward midfielder, whoever he might be, as opposed to playing a second striker (either Torres or Llorente) or a pure wing (Navas). The Dutch are expecting so too. Now, the Dutch coach is saying loud and clear that the Germans committed suicide by sitting on their field waiting for Spain to make a mistake. He says that Germany was scared, and Holland will not be so. Holland, he says, should attack Spain. I am not sure what this means. Let me make an educated guess. Holland will possibly try to press hard Spain really high up, much like Chile and Paraguay did. This is what some Dutch blogs are advocating. I wonder, however, whether Holland has the type of player capable of pressing like Chile and Paraguay did for 90 minutes. Dirk Kuyt could press like this and then run the marathon, he surely can. But the rest of the Dutch strikers and even midfielders are rather lazy when it comes to defending-they generally prefer to save their energies for their attacking speed-runs. I do not see Van Persie helping out consistently in this task, and I do not see Robben staying fresh for his break-through sprints if he has to run so much pressing the Spanish defenders at the start of every single Spanish play. In any case, hopefully the Dutch will not read this blog and will never realize that Spain was successfully blocked by Chile and Paraguay only because these teams played with 5 and often 6 players in the midfield, combined with the exasperating fact that Del Bosque was reluctant to match those figures. As soon as he did bring in one more midfielder (Fábregas) with just one substitution, those games changed and Spain scored. Holland is very different from Chile and Paraguay in this regard. Holland typically plays with only four midfielders, not five or six. And Spain will hopefully play with five this time from the get go. Pressing Spain high-up under these conditions might be much more of a suicide than the German strategy, if you ask me.

One more factor will be the jabulani, which has been proved by NASA scientists at the Ames Research Center’s Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to have funky aerodynamics that make its flight unpredictable at any speed higher than 44 miles per hour.



All right, all right, both teams play with the same ball. However, the Dutch are notorious for their long shot goals, and the Spaniards are not. I am not primarily thinking about Van Bronkhorst impressive goal against Uruguay. Even though it was not the first goal that he scored from such a distance and such a quality in his career, he is actually a rare scorer. I am talking about the bunch of absolute masters in this specialty playing for Holland, in particular Robben, Sneijder, and Van der Vaart. On the Spanish side, only Alonso is used to trying out. He does not have a high success rate, though. He must keep trying, even more so on Sunday.

Apparently, this erratic effect of jabulani's flight is increased by altitude. The final will be played at some 1700m, an altitude a bit higher than a mile. Spain will have to count on this and plan its strategy accordingly. The most important strategic move against long shots experts is to defend as far from the box as possible, much as Spain did against Germany. Whenever Spain needs to back-up pressed by Holland's attack, it will need to avoid fouling the Dutch close to the box, and then block the Dutch shooters by lots of two-to-one defensive moves. This will take a lot of coordination, and will require from Spain to play with very tight lines and also to draw the off-side line pretty high-up.

The Spaniards,on their side, will have to improve their shooting effectivity. They have stunk at it so far. I do not have a very high oppinion of the Dutch goalie, Maarten Stekelenburg, but it may be just me. The Spaniards should test him as soon as possible.

I have not made any prediction in this blog. Football is just unpredictable, and a final game in a World Cup is even harder to predict than any other game. A red card, a bad call, a defensive mistake, can completely change things. I will dare, however, to make to very general predictive comments. First, I do not think that this game will be necessarily won by the team scoring first. Both teams have impressive attacking formations. They both come back from a negative score to win the game. It should be, therefore, a pretty open game. Now, if Spain scores first, the probabilities for the Dutch to turn the game around will be significatly smaller than if the Dutch score first. Spain is much more versatile, its bench is much deeper and stronger and this allows Del Bosque to change the strategy completely with one or two substitions. The second predictive remark is that I see lots of goals being scored on Sunday. Let it be so.

After the game, it may take me a day or two to put myself together to write again in this blog, whatever the winner may be. I am sure that you will understand. Have a great final game everyone.

Germany 0 - Spain 1

¡Thank you, Del Bosque!¡Thank you, Del Bosque!¡Thank you, Del Bosque!

For listening to our prayers, for playing five guys in the midfield, for adding a sixth one later (Silva), and for playing Torres at the right time. This is the way a brave and smart coach should play, trying to score the second goal and kill the game as opposed to just getting more and more defensive. Thank you, Del Bosque, because Spain advanced to the Final Game of the World Cup 2010!

And now, a few hours later and still hangover from football and happiness, let's review the game.

First of all, congratulations to Germany. It is a true pity to see it go for the third or fourth place. The game last night should have been the final game. This young, bold and joyful German team played a phenomenal World Cup. It deployed an elegant, fast, skilfull soccer with exquisite fair play and will certainly give Germany lots of good games in the years to come.

On the Spanish side, Pedro Rodríguez changed it all, and yet, it was not exactly him who did it, but the presence of a fifth guy of his characteristics in the midfield. It happened to be him the chosen one, and he did a good job, but it could have been just as well Silva o Mata, and we would have most likely watched the same game. Actually, I hold that it would have been better for Spain with either Silva or Mata instead of Pedro. They both happen to have played for a number of years with Villa on the same team, Valencia, whereas Pedro and Villa just met three weeks ago. In any case, my point is that the fifth advanced midfielder, a false wing, someone who at last helped out Xavi and Iniesta, made all the difference for Spain. He made the passing game possible.

Thanks to this fifth midfielder, Germany could not have numerical superiority in the creation zone. Del Bosque stubbornly avoided this solution against Chile, Portugal, and Paraguay, and Spain suffered a lot. All those teams had at least one more player than Spain in the midfield, often two more. The Spanish passing game was constantly interrupted. None of those teams got to steal very many balls, but they did commit enough fauls, kicked the Spainards hard enough, threw the ball out of bounds enough times for Spain not to find any rythm in its passing game and to rarely approach its opponet's strike zone. When a midfielder does not have enough friends around him, then he cannot play one-touch. He would need to run a little with the ball looking for an open friend. This few seconds of running with the ball would be enough for the opponents ovepopulating the midfield to tackle the guy with the ball. End of the passing game. Last night things were very different. Spain played one or two-touches constantly because there were always open friends showing up, often offering two passing options. This prevented the Germans from tackling the Spaniards This fact puzzled a lot of people who posted comments in the New York Times after the match. See, by the time a German would approach the Spaniard receiving the ball, the Spaniard had already passed it one-touch to a friend, who just did the same thing, and so on. No tackling can take place when the ball moves that fast. The defenders arrive always too late. The ball is not there any more. It's somewhere else now.

This was a killer for Germany. I have said this before, and I should repeat it. Constantly chasing the ball is not only physically exhausting. It is also psychologically very frustrating. It makes you feel likea fool, like they are playing monkey-in-the-middle, and yes, you are the monkey, and your family, friends, and entire country are watching it. Your legs start to feel heavier than usual and you wonder what is the point of chasing again the same guy that you just unsuccessfully chased two minutes ago. Meanwhile, the Spaniards were not randomly passing the ball. They were very consciously looking for a crack in the German defense. Any distraction, any giving-up on the chase, could have been fatal. It really sucks to play against Spain. I can see that. You just need to understand that this way of playing is very difficult, in general, and almost impossible against such a strong and competitive team as Germany, in particular.

Del Bosque had made fun the night before in a radio interview of a very well reputed Spanish journalist that I happen to like a lot, Alfredo Relaño, for consistently and insistinlgy asking for the passing game. Del Bosque said that just like his own father, who got mentally stuck in 1939, the year when the Spanish Civil War ended, Relaño got stuck in june 2008, the month when Spain won the European Cup of Nations under a different coach who brought to this team, precisely, the passing game. I got so upset by his unfair and unreasoned mocking that I wrote a very critical piece in the Spanish blog. (A day does not have enough hours for me to duplicate every single post into this blog in English, sorry about that.) I felt extremely disappointed. I had the strong conviction that only playing some version of the passing game Spain could beat Germany, and the radio interview just told me that it was not going to happen. After an entire World Cup not having seen this playing style, the words of the Spanish coach sounded completely credible to me.

I was fooled, and so was everybody else, including probably Joachim Löw. Spain had not played passing game in the entire competition, and we came to think that this was some ideological stance taken by the coach. He wanted to be more vertical, he thought that this playing style was too ineffective, whatever. Was he hidding Spain's most lethal weapon? Was he consciously trying to fool everyone? May be, I don't know, what can I say? If he really kept the most powerful Spanish weapon, its unique playing style, consciously in the closet holding on until the semifinals, he is either nuts or a genious, since Paraguay almost sent Spain home for not playing the passing game from the get go. But then again, Paraguay lost. I guess he must be a genious.

Watching five very skilfull Spanish midfielders on the field we did take the time machine and travel back two years to the final game against a Germany at the Euro2008. That day, however, Spain did not play good passing game. The players were a nervous wreck. It took them the first fifteen or twenty minutes to start calming down, but they were never completely themselves the entire game. Last night, however, Spain did play a decent version of the passing game against a much better Germany.

As expected, Germany rarely stole the ball, and was only able to mount two good counterattacks in the entire game. In the first one, Ramos fouled Ozil when he was coming into the box. On a frozen image it seems that the contact happened right before he crossed the box line. The foul was pretty clear, and it should have meant a yellow card for Ramos. The referee did not want to see it. On the second German counterattack, Casillas made a good safe. That was it for Germany. Germany shot 5 times in total, Spain 13 times. More important than the number of shots, and the shots on target (2 to 5), was the number of very dangerous plays for both teams that statistics never account for. Spain outnumberd Germany in that regard. Germany was permanently on its toes, Spain much less so.

Funny that Spain would end up scoring out of a corner kick, a German specialty. Some saw this as the irony of the game. After so much passing, Spain could only score out of a free kick. It certainly could be seen under this light. Nevertheless, you need to keep in mind that the passing game is as much a defensive strategy as it is an attacking one. It is the best defense for a team of small people like Spain. Defensively, this style paid off big time even if the goal came from a different route.

Germany - Spain, Quick preview

Unless the German coach, Joachim Löw, comes up with a big surprise in the last minute, Germany should use the very same strategy played against Argentina.

Löw will base the German game in a very strong pressing in the midfield, looking for steal and run opportunities. For this to be effective Germany tries to have numerical superiority in the midfield, playing a defensive 4-5-1. When the opponent has the ball and is starting the play, Joachim Löw places Ozil as the most advanced German player, and asks the much stronger and aggressive Klose to join the pack of German wolves in the midfield. As soon as they get the ball back and the counterattack play has started, Ozil runs to a wing and Klose takes his place in the middle of the German attack.

When the Germans steal the ball, they pass it quick to Ozil, who typically bounces it back in just one touch to some of his team mates running fast towards him. The guy who receives the ball from Ozil is expected to pass it in one touch forward to some free space where another German is already approaching... in three or four one-touch passes they mount a counter attack and finish it. Lightening fast, and very effective.

Very few national teams in the world have the proper antidote against the German strong midfield defense and counterattacks. Luckily, Spain is one of them. The right antidote is not, as one might think, playing with more and faster defenders, or simply not to open up too much, not to play too offensive. The right antidote is to never lose the ball in a compromised position, either in the defense or in the midfield, and if you have to loose the ball when attacking, do it so by shooting, that is, by finishing the play. In this way, Germany is forced to start all its plays from the get go, from the German goalie. In other words, if Germany cannot steal the ball, it cannot counter attack.

If you have been followig this blog, by now you must know by heart what I hold that Spain should do in order not to have the ball stolen by the Germans. Spain should play five midfielders, indeed. This would equalize numerically the Germans in the midfield, and then Spanish technical superiority would have a chance to prevail.

Germany does not consistenly overwhelm its opponent or keep its concentration at its fullest for the entire game. On the contrary, this German team goes through emotional ups-and-downs during every game. Against Argentina, the first 15 minutes were a German hurrican, and then the German wind calmed down for the rest of the first half. The result in the middle of the game was just 1-0 for Germany. In the second half, Germany had again some magic 6 minutes full of adrenaline when it scored two more goals and killed the game. Now, defense-wise, the Germans do keep a fairly constant fight for every ball every minute of the game.

If Spain deploys its game of passing and control, it would minimize the number, durantion and stregth of those gale-force German gusts. If Spain is once again outnumbered in the midfield, the risk that Germany will steal a few balls pretty quickly and end up scoring first is really high.

It is all in the hands of Del Bosque. A line-up with five midfielders would make all the difference. If Fabregas was one of them instead of Alonso, it would be even better. We have not seen such a line-up in this World Cup. Will Del Bosque underplay this team again? Hopefully not. Spain odds of beating Germany would significantly increase by playing the passing game at its fullest. And if Spain ends up having to go home, beat by this great and young Germany, it should at least do it with some style.

Paraguay 0 - Spain 1

¡SPAIN ADVANCES TO THE SEMIFINALS!

Congratulations to Paraguay. It did not make it easy for Spain. The best one on the Paraguayan squad, the coach Gerardo Martino, who surprised everyone. He definitely surprised the Spanish spy and myself. Paraguay did not play the way the spy working for Spain had anticipated. It did not play "just like Chile, but 15 yards backed-up". It played 20 yards pushing forward, pressing even the Spanish goalie. Paraguay did not wait for Spain sitting on its own half of the field either, as I had anticipated. The Spanish coach seemed also surprised and caught off-guard, completely paralized, unable to react for some very long 55 minutes.

Spain lost the midfield from the get go. Paraguay had numerical superiority and blocked all the passing lines for the Spanish midfielders. Thus Paraguay pressing and defensive strategy had more devastating effects than the Chilean and Portuguese defenses. The game was too thick and heavy. Paraguay would frequently steal the ball and look for its strikers, very mobile and dangerous. Spain could not get a fluid ball circulation and, therefore, could not reach the Paraguayan strike zone. Even worse than that, the Spaniards were forced to make big physical efforts not to lose the ball. Paraguay was better and Spain was getting discouraged and tired.

Once again in this World Cup, the Spanish team badly needed one extra midfielder. It was an absolute practical necessity. Spain creative channels were cut, outnumbered by Paraguay. Just as they were outnumbered by Switzerland, Chile and Portugal. The team was way too long, there was too much distance between the last defender and the most forward striker, and therefore there was too much empty space in the middle of the field. Furthermore, Iniesta was not participating in the game, away from the midfield. He was sent by the coach to get lost in the wing where he is the least dangerous, the right wing.

In the worst game played by Spain so far, after a half time without a single Spanish shot, when the team was in worst shape... Del Bosque finally made the right substitutions. Fabregas came in at last for Torres, and later Pedro for Alonso. And yes, Iniesta was moved to the left wing and Pedro was sent to the right wing. Defensively, Spain was not affected negatively one bit. Offensively, it was very possitively improved. Scoring chances started to happen, and then a penalty, and then a goal.

I cannot repeat it enough in this blog. The number of midfielders is the key, not their names. A midfield of five players should have been the initial line-up. It was not, all right. But then the substitutions should have happened when this need was apparent, after the first 20 minutes at the latest. It finally happened in the second half, and it changed the game in favor of Spain. Congratulations, Del Bosque. Better late than never.

A very strong Germany awaits. Hopefully the Spanish coach will have learnt from his mistakes and also from his successful decissions. Hopefully we will finally see the passing game at its fullest against Germany. Even if Spain has to lose against this great and young Germany, we all hope that it will do it with some style. Precisely the style that it lacked today for most of the game. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

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.

Portugal 0 - Spain 1, 2nd round

If vertigo can be deceiving, the tension of live broadcasting and the sweetness of victory even more so. Indeed, I just watched the game again, this time recorded, and it did not look quite the same game that I had seen live. Portugal was much less close to score than I felt during the live broadcast, and Spain did overall a much better job than I thought, both defensively and offensively.

It was probably the most serious game Spain has played so far in this World Cup. Intesity and focus were higher than ever before, and every players was involved. For example, in the 9th minute of the game Villa sprinted all the way down to the Spanish left corner trying to block a cross from Costa. Really remarkable effort for a pure striker! Both the offensive and defensive efforts were all along generous and collective. The quality of the opponent required such a vigilant attitude. In fact, two out the three most dangerous scoring chances for Portugal came precisely when some Spanish player lost intensity or concentration.

The biggest news, however, came on the strategy front. For the first time in this World Cup, Xavi Hernandez was in charge of beginning most plays. After so much debate about him playing out of place, about his incompatibility with Xabi Alonso, and so on, as you have read in this blog, the coach finally paid some attention to us critics a put Xavi Hernandez in charge. Whenever Hernandez would go back to pick up the ball, Alonso would go forward and occupy the space that Hernandez left free. At last! This simple move significantly improved Spain's ball circulation. As soon as Alonso would stop moving forward for a while, Spain's fluidity would clog and the team would stop having scoring chances.

On the down side, Spain keeps having big problems when attacking static defenses. Of all the scoring chances during the game Spain enjoyed, only three, including the goal, were kicks inside the box. Among all possible remedies for this problem, I hold in this blog again and again that the best one, the most consistent with the overall Spanish strategy, is to include a 5th miedfielder. The coach, however, seems to think differently. He brought in Fernando Llorente. David Villa scored for Spain just two minutes after Llorente was brought in, and the Spanish press celebrated the goal as a success of both Llorente and Del Bosque. I say, in contrast, that correlation does not imply causation.

Llorente played facing his own goalie, and the team lacked as much verticality as before. Now, after scoring, Spain is just deadly. But this is the case whether or not Llorente is on the field. There is no team like Spain in its ability to play monkey-in-the-middle while looking for a crack in its opponent's defensive wall. I argue that this would be easier, and the ball loses less frequent, if the coach would added another miedfielder. And the assists to Llorente or whoever happens to play as a striker would increase exponentially. Del Bosque does not seem to agree.

Spain advances to the round of 8 psychologically stronger and having played in some phases during the game the most vibrant, skilfull, and beautiful to watch football played in this World Cup so far. Del Bosque has corrected two fundamental mistakes: Xavi Hernandez is back in command, and the strategy is again based on the passing game and ball possession. It still lacks some ability to break through the opponent's defense and get inside the box, and to secure ball possession a little longer. In my view, both things go together, and would be brought about by a fifth miedfielder. However, I have to feel happy that Del Bosque at least listened about Xavi Hernandez and the wings. Now the Spanish style starts resembling what it used to be. No one doubts that it can get even better, i.e., more dominant and more dangerous. Against the rivals to come it may be truly necessary.