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.

Portugal 0 - Spain 1

Let me say something quick and temporary. I will post a more reflective comment after I watch the game again. I was way too tense as I watched it live, and cannot trust the accuracy of my perceptions.

Perhaps this is how I should begin. I was too tense during the game, and I shouldn't have been so tense. Please do not get me wrong. Portugal is a very good team, with some great players. Too defensive for my taste, but a very serious opponent anyway.

Spain, however, allowed way too many scoring opportunities. Spain should have had a much tighter control over the game. The line-up, once again, was the problem. More midfielders were badly needed. Xavi Hernández was isolated somewhere between three or five Portuguese players. Iniesta tried to help out, but it was not enough for reaching numerical parity in the midfield. And once again, today Xavi Hernández was also forced to receive the ball facing his own goalie.

Spain´s scoring opportunities were all from far away, at least until Villa scored. This tells how hard it was for the Spainards to cut through the Portuguese defensive wall. The problem was not lack of skill. The problem was that the Spaniards were outnumbered as soon as they would step on the Portuguese first 1/3 of the field.

In this scenario, Spain lost the ball in dangerous areas too many times. The first half left everyone with the feeling that scoring was closer for Portugal than for Spain.

Thank goodness that Villa scored first. After Spain scored, everything was easier for the Spaniards. Hidding the ball and making Portugal chase it was easy breezy. Further scoring opportunities started to show up.

Surprisingly enough, Portugal surrendered. Only in the last 10 minutes of the game Portugal re-attempted to score, but by then it was a little too little, a little too late.

The Spanish press at this hour could not be happier and more praiseworthy. The coach gets most of the laurels for playing Llorente and supposedly changing the dynamics of the game with this decision. I will have to see the game again to have a better judgment about it. The fact of the matter is that Del Bosque is the true winner of this game, and thus he will feel reinforced in his views. The passing game is probably over for Spain in this World Cup, at least at its highest. The downgraded passing game played by Del Bosque´s strategy might be enough to beat Paraguay, and possibly also to beat Argentina. I am not quite sure that it can beat Germany or Brazil, though, unless Del Bosque upgrades it back to its fullest expression.

Just 10 Minutes Said It All

Let's watch here a sample of what I have been arguing in this blog. From the minute that Fábregas replaced Torres, in the second half against Chile, up till the minute when both teams agreed on calling it a game ahead of time, 10 minutes elapsed when Spain swiped Chile away. At last, Spain was playing with 5 midfielders.

As soon as Bielsa, the bright coach of Chile, noticed the replacement, he ordered his players to back up a little. Spain was about to take over the midfield and establish numerical parity and technical dominance. Scoring opportunities started to show up with some consistency for Spain for the first time during the game-one scoring opportunity every 90 seconds! Spain missed them all, but not by much. All opportunites finished the play and forced Chile to start all over again.

Having a heavily populated midfield closer to the finish of every Spanish attacking play, Spain added one critical piece to its repertoire: it could press in packs every Chilean defender trying to start playing the ball after having recuperated it. You will see in the video that dangerous steals started to happen much too often for Chile's interest nearby the Chilean strike zone.

The Spanish team moved from dominated to dominating, from feeling overwhelmed to overwhelming its opponent, from occasional gust to wind storm. The Spanish players, who according to the Spanish press are purportedly in really bad physical shape, flourished like a recently watered rose plant, and regained the dynamism and joy that they had almost completely lost during this World Cup. Xavi Hernández smiled for the first time in two weeks, and he made smile the whole team with him.

These 10 minutes were quite telling: they told everyone who would listen that the Spanish players can still play their circus-quality passing game; they told that passing game is the indicated antidote against hard-working pressing teams; they told everyone that 10 minutes of passing game were worth in terms of depth and scoring opportunities more than 60 minutes of direct football; these 10 minutes reminded everyone that the best defense is a good attack; they told critics that the Spaniards have not been tired in previous games, just tied-up by systems that do not enhance their virtues. These 10 minutes told anyone who would listen that Spain can still play like this:



Just 10 minutes said it all, loud and clear. Will Del Bosque get the message?

Chile 1 - Spain 2

Spain is very confused. The players receive confusing signals from the coaching bench, and do not really know how to decode them. After all, Logic tells that from a contradiction anything is possible, because nothing follows.

The Spanish coach, Vicente del Bosque, pledges public loyalty again and again to his predecessor's passing game, the playing strategy and style that made Spain the current European Champion. And yet, Del Bosque designs a completely different strategy for every game and every opponent. This double message creates false expectations not only among the fans, but also among the players themselves.

Against Chile, the players were expected to overcome the aggressive Chilean pressing with skilfull and quick passing, and yet the coach did not provide the team with enough midfielders to do so; they were supposed to be on the offensive, and yet the coach played a defensive midfield; they were expected to have overwhelming ball posession, and yet the team was designed for direct football, for long vertical passing skipping the midfielders. The consequence of all this was severe underperformance.

Indeed, against Chile, Spain was designed to play direct football, once again. The Chilean press really hard all over the field. Chile moves forward in formation attempting to steal the ball. The Chilean pressing goes all the way up to their opponent's defensive line. This forces the Chilean defenders to move forward as well, in order for the team to be really compact and for the pressing to be effective. One way to play against this strategy is to send long passes over everyone's heads to the empty space left between the Chilean defenders and the Chilean goalie. This empty space amounts usually to somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the entire field. The Chilean goalie is in charge of sweeping those passes by anticipation using his feet.

Spain gave up ball possession and attempted these long passes looking for Torres and Villa. This is how the first goal came about. It was the result of a somewhat fortunate play for the Spaniards, based however in pocking Chile's weakest point. Until Spain scored, Chile had given an excellent impression. It had prevented Spain from attacking, it had created one very clear scoring chance, and it was making the Spaniards feel really unconfortable on the field. However, the second Spanish shot meant a second goal, and that was it for Chile.

The two Spanish goals eased the Spanish anxiety significantly. The Spanish team, however, did not have a brilliant performance overall. Only when Torres was replaced by Fábregas in the second half, Spain had some minutes of exquisite football. They lasted as long everyone realized that if no one would score any more goals, both teams would most likely qualify for the next round. That was the end of it.

The Spanish underperformance may have had an additional origin. At this point into the competition, the early negative result and the load of criticism coming from the previous coach, Luis Aragonés, and also from the Spanish press may be paying a toll as well. Great boxing champions who get knocked-out for the first time are said not to be the same ever again. When a punch sends them to the ground, they stand up awaken from their invincibility fantasy. For the first time in their lives, they start wondering. They wonder whether or not they are as good as they thought they were. The wonder whether or not their best times are history now.

This seems to be Spain's state of mind these days. Knocked out by a less-talented team-the United States-in Spain's last participation in a play-off-format competition, it was beat again by a less-talented team-Switzerland-in the next play-off-format competition. In both defeats, Spain's opponent used exactly the same strategy. Both came after two long years of staying unbeat.

The American and Swiss punches made Spain wonder so much that against Honduras chaged its strategy completey, as it was changed again against Chile. Spain kept wondering so much that when Chile lost a player Spain decided not to attack anymore. It rather risked an accident that would send it to the ground for good than dare to be true to itself and play attacking football... lacking self-confidence.

Spain just earned much more than a qualification for the next round. It just earned some extra time. Spain has up till Tuesday to look inside, find itself and stop wondering. Today it found out that it still has its good old punch intact. If the coach could only make up his mind about which playing style fits the team best! If it could finally put all his bets on the passing game!

Vertigo Can Be Deceiving

Statistics are often useless. Sometimes, however, they turn confusion into clarity. This time, a quick look at the compared statistics of both games played so far by Spain leads to an unexpected conclusion: the passing game against Switzerland had better attacking figures than the more direct and vertical playing style used against Honduras, evethough Switzerland was a much better organized, tougher team, that played a much more defensive game, whereas Honduras was a worse organized, more fragile team, that played a less defensive game. Indeed, the fact that against Honduras two goals were scored and the players performed at a higher rithm left a deceiving impression in most viewers, unfortunately including Spain's coach and a majority of the international and Spanish sports press.

For example, most viewers would have thought after watching the game against Honduras that Spain had shot many more times, and also more times on target, than it did against Switzerland. The stats, however, tell a different story. Spain only shot twice more against Honduras than it did against Switzerland (25 against 23 shots), in spite of the fact that Honduras defense was less strong and left many more empty spaces. Furthermore, Spain had one less shot on target agasint Honduras than it did against Switzerland (6 against 7). Spain shot once against the wood on each game, and missed a very clear one-to-one scoring opportunity against the goalie on each game as well.

Anyone who watched both games would be tempted to say that Spain gave more work to the Hondurian than to the Swiss goalkeeper, and yet, the Swiss goalie had more interventions during the game. Wouldn´t you have sworn that Spain had more corner kicks gainst Honduras? Well, it did not. The number of corner kicks for Spain on both games was exactly the same: 12.

Vertigo did not bring about better quantitative results to Spain than pause did. It brought about two goals. The big question remains--how many goals would have the passing game brought about to Spain had it been displayed against a very weak Honduras?

Honduras 0 - Spain 2

The game starts and the kick off is for Spain: a long kick and the ball flies high up for 30 yards towards Torres' head, to no avail. That says it all from the get go. In this game there will be no passing game. Forget about associative football today. You are about to watch direct football. Today Spain will be Liverpool, Glasgow Celtic, Northern Ireland.

Del Bosque had announced before the game that no abrupt change of course would take place after the defeat against Switzerland. And yet, as far as I can remember, Spain had never played with the lay-out displayed against Honduras. It had never displayed an asymetric starting line-up, playing one true wing (Navas) with a false wing (Villa) together with a pure forward (Torres). Interestingly enough, this was precisely Real Madrid lay-out when Del Bosque coached it. On the right wing, a true wing player (Figo), one the left wing, a false wing player (Zidane), and then a pure forward (Raúl). What a coincidence! Isn't it? Del Bosque decided to experiment in the middle of the World Cup, when he had plenty of friendly games to do so. The passing game is over. What an abrupt change of course, indeed!

The strategy was crystal clear: either Xabi Alonso or Piqué were supposed to cross diagonal passes to the wings, the true and the false one, Navas and Villa, and they were asked to play one-to-one against the weak Honduran defenders and look for a shot or a cross into the box. The first goal was precisely a product of this strategy. Piqué crosses a long pass for Villa, some 30 yards away, who dribbles two defenders and scores before a third one.

Navas, following his coach's directions quite a bit too literally, put up a display of miscarried crosses from the right wing. Up to 12 naive crosses either for the Hondurans or for no one at all. The Spanish TV broadcaster was all excited after each cross. "Almost!", he would exclaim. "Great performance by Navas today!", praised again and again. Besides 12 inefficient crosses, Navas bounced the ball against his defender at least 5 times, and only got from all this effort two corner kicks. If we add to this two equally bad crosses by Sergio Ramos, then we have 15 completely wasted plays by Spain on the right wing. Un-freaking-believable!

The quiet guest to this nonsense was Xavi Hernández. All by himself, lonely as he could be, far away from every one, both midfielders and forwards, he had nobody to associate with. He spent most of the game watching how the ball would fly over his head, first from the defenders or Alonso to one wing or the other, and then from the wing to the Honduran box, that is to say, to the Honduran golie, to the head of some defender, or simply out of bounds. Xavi was not in charge of organizing the team, of timing the tempo, of giving assists. Today the best organizing midfielder in the world was assigned a secondary role that can be performed by a much less talented player. Perhaps this is why Del Bosque ended up sending Xavi to the bench.

I must confess that when I saw Fábregas ready to enter in the field, warming up jumping up and down by the fourth referee, I scratched my eyes. For a fraction of a second I thought that Del Bosque had seen the light. Honduras was extremely disorganized, there were lots of spaces opening all over the field, and Spain was wasting a lot of opportunities simply because it lacked a bit of pause and some easy passing as oppposed to so much vertigo. For a fraction of a second I thought that Del Bosque would replace Navas by Fábregas, so he could associate with Mata and Xavi and finally all three would put some very clear assists for Villa or for each other.

The illusion lasted just as long as the TV spotted Xavi head down, walking to be replaced, with the sadness of a goodbye in his face: goodbye to the passing game, goodbye to the European Champion. The predictable and flat Spain, the team that does not know whether to play with skill or strength, passing game or loads of Furia, is back. Good luck with that.

Switzerland 1 - Spain 0

Congrats to the Swiss. Now, let's see what we can make of this from Spain's perspective.

The Spanish media all seem to think a little too little, a little too fast. The dominant reaction in the Spanish media is that this was just an accident and the product of real bad luck. To elaborate on this the usual excuses are added: the Swiss goal was off-side (true, by the way); it also was incredibly fortunate; Switzerland should have played with 10 most of the game had the referee shown a red card to the Swiss player who being the last defender fouled Iniesta preventing him from scoring; at least one very clear penalty was not called against Switzerland; Spain shot 24 times, Switzerland only 8; Spain had overwhelming ball possession, around 73%...

All that might be true, and yet, it does not explain enough. Why did Spain only shoot 6 times on target? Why did it only have a small number of very clear scoring opportunities? Why didn't Spain sweep Switzerland away?

The few Spanish journalists who have some analysis capacity blame it, to my surprise, on the fact that Spain's fowards are not in prime condition. Villa is exhausted, literally burnt out, and Torres cannot play a full game yet, and when he plays his lack of competitive rithm becomes apparent.

When they stop focusing on individual names and they analyze the strategy, again to my surprise some very smart Spanish journalists wish Del Bosque would have brought in Llorente from the bench in order to head some of the dozens of crosses that were sent into the box by Navas and Ramos just to be bounced out by the Swiss defenders.

To me most of this is nonsense. I think that the factors that explain why Spain lost today are these instead:

(1) A problem of design: I cannot say it enough times in this blog. Spain ought to play only one destructive midfielder, either Xabi Alonso or Busquets. Pick your poison. In the Euro 2008 it was only Marcos Senna who played in that position-oh boy, do we miss him! Today Spain played with two players doing Senna's job (this is Alfredo Relaño's observation). This is how Del Bosque likes it. It has been the case since he got the job. However, against a team with 9 players defending behind the ball, like Switzerland plays, and most teams in this world cup sadly play like Switzerland, Spain does not need two defensive midfielders. Del Bosque is too conservative, too scared. Alonso and Busquets tend to occupy the same position, and thus they interfere with and bother each other. Besides, Spain misses this extra guy running between lines who would have the ability to break through, give the final pass or score himself. In three words, Spain misses Fábregas, or Mata, or someone playing as an extra creative midfielder and/or false forward. The passing game is much less fluid without this extra skillful guy. The magic of the passing game is very much in the number of midfielders on the pitch. Del Bosque does not seem to get that crucial lesson from Aragonés.

(2) A big mistake in the Plan B For situations like today´s after Switzerland scored, Del Bosque has been rehearsing in the previous friendly games with wings and a strong and tall forward, Llorente. I have written about this in my previous posts. Today it seemed that Llorente was going to play when Iniesta got injured and his position had to be filled in instead. Anyway, the initial plan remained, and Navas and Ramos crossed the ball dozens of times looking for Torres and Villa, paired with Swiss defenders big like mountains. I think that this is a huge mistake. Spain abandons then the impredictable passing game, where players interchange their positions, midfielders become forwards, forwards become wings and so on, for a much more classic, and also much more predictable and easy to defend lay-out. Spain wasted precious time, and precious plays, playing a game that any defending team would dream of.

(3) A problem of attitude: Spain played a little too relaxed until Switzerland scored, and then it played too anxious. It lacked a bit of the goal-cannibal instinct that has had in the past. Del Bosque repeatedly said before the game that Spain had to be patient, and the players interpreted that they could just pass the ball to each other endlessly without having the goal in their minds from the get go. Not that they were too cocky, but rather that they were too patient, as if they were sedated, without their usual and necessary adrenaline. Jorge Sámano's analysis at El Pais runs along these lines. I think that he is right. Well, only partially right. There are also other factors that he forgets.

(4) The psychological work is not right Today Silva, Villa, and Torres, and at times also Alonso, were too anxious, too speedy, lacking the necessary mental pause when it came to shooting and also when it came to giving the last pass. This is unusual in them, and it is not a good sign at all. Del Bosque has not done his job right in this respect. Their current state of anxiety explains better their underperformance than their lack of physical shape. Hopefully they will calm down after passing to the next round... if they pass.

Luis Aragonés' analysis after the game was probably more explicit than good politics would advice. Here is his view: "The Spanish players did not have enough speed when it came to occupying empty spaces in order to participate in the passing game. I would have played with only one destructive midfielder. Spain knew that Switzerland would give up on attacking, thus it should have played the first fifteen minutes with incredible intensity, trying to score fast. Instead, they were too convinced that they would win easily this game. This is partially the Spanish and international press fault. Too many compliments made the Spaniards not to play at 110% of their capabilities." I cannot be more in agreement with him, as usual. After all, he put together this playing style for this team, and someone else is messing with his toy.

¿Any reasons for optimism? Well, Spain played a good first half. As I said, it lacked ambition, but the passing game was pretty good. It was good enough to create a good number of scoring opportunities against a Swiss team that was physically still at its best. That is the way to go. I do think that replacing Xabi Alonso or Busquets by Fábregas would improve the performance even more, particularly when it comes to creating scorig opportunities. It would turn Spain's passing game into superb and incredibly dangerous as opposed to what we had today-just good and threatening. The probabilities that Del Bosque would do such a replacement are slim. Nevertheless, even with Alonso and Busquets together in the field Spain can still play really well and have enough opportunities to score. Hopefully in the next games some of those scoring opportunities will come true before Spain's rivals score first and lock-up their bunker's door. Then we may witness some Spainsh scoring galores. Or else, we may witness how a terrific team capable of the most-attractive-to-watch football in the tournament goes home ahead of time.

Spain 6 - Poland 0

¡What a great groove to fly with heading to South Africa!

Last night Spain confirmed that it has a very peculiar football style with no need of pure wing specialists to break through the wings:



and no need of a strong, tall and classic forward to break through a wall of strong and tall defenders:



¡Wow!¡Exhibition football!¡These guys are the Harlem Globbetrotters of international footballl! Jokes aside, this play shows that against big defenders you do not need tank forwards like Llorente to whom sending very predictable crosses. It can be just as good, if not a better idea, to play small unpredictable guys who play on the ground... until they pull a lob out of a magic hat. To tell the whole truth, in a competition game (as opposed to a friendly game) against a more experienced team, this play for the 2-0 would have probably been cut short with a foul at the box edge and a yellow card. It is also true that the number of yellow cards that Spain rivals will want to accumulate is finite, and fouls at the box edge are also good for Spain. Playing the ball on the ground pays off one way or the other.

Having said this, I must add that Llorente is much more than the tank forward that Del Bosque seems to see. He is very skilfull and agile. It is only a matter of time that he finds out the wonders of combining on the ground with the magic leprecauns. Perhaps even Navas will one of these days of practice get hit by the idea that he is not playing for Sevilla anymore. He may all of the sudden realize that he does not need to create the entire play all by himself. It may hit him that plays are created collectively in this magic world, and that when made by more than one leprechaun, after just one or two contacts with the ball, they become way more dangerous and productive. He is skillful enough to play this type of fast combinations. For now, it has been hard for him to get used to the style, as he retains the ball a little too long in his efforts to dribble the defender again and again until he can get the cross through. By then, the cross has become predictable. If only Del Bosque would let him know! Will he?

After the 2-0, the game was over. Poland stopped thinking that tying or winning the game was possible. It started to feel a little too overwhelmed by the Spanish ball possession. The heat of Murcia, the southern city where the game took place, may have also been felt a bit unbearable by the already defeated Polish spirit. The other four goals were good for getting more confidence, more coordination between team mates that need to get used to each other, getting in good shape and keeping the faith on associative football and also on the importance of long-distance shooting.

Perhaps the best piece of news in this game is something tha no media has talked about. Hidden behind the 6 goals scored by Spain, lies a 0 on the Spanish goal. This is to be explained by the lack of Polish scoring opportunities. A fact to be contrasted against the abundance of scoring opportunities enjoyed by the previous rivals of Spain in this preparation games, namely, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Casillas had to save a good Polish shot, and that was it in the entire game. The Spanish pressing in the midfield recuperated the ball again and again long before Poland could even start to build up an attacking play. Way to go.

With midfielders and forwards helping so much in the defensive pressing when the team does not have the ball, and then the constant passing when it has it, Spain starts resembling a lot, really a lot, to the current European champion. It just needs a few little yet important details to get there. It would need to keep playing Capdevila on the left defense. It would need Xabi Alonso to play faster short passes (or even better, it would need Fábregas to play instead). It would need Sergio Ramos to keep his defensive position, as opposed to attacking like a beheaded chicken.

All this makes the team a little weaker. And yet, the rest of the engine is lubricated and today has way more confidence on its own possibilities than before the Euro2008. And, gee, they are still producing a lot of phenomenal football. Let's hope that it shall suffice with that.

Has Del Bosque fully embraced associative football?

For the Spanish national team, associative football was the legacy of Luis Aragonés, the coach that led Spain to win the Euro2008. The new national coach, Vicente Del Bosque, has seemed reluctant to fully embrace this style based on constant passing since he got the job.

When attacking, Del Bosque prefers a more vertical football. He wants faster passing (thus risking the ball a little more, and losing more balls per game) and he would love playing with wings. He prefers playing two destructive midfielders on the field (typically Busquets and Xabi Alonso), as opposed to playing just one. He'd rather play muscular Arbeloa on the defensive left side, eventhough he is a right-footer, than the lefty, better passer, better scorer, and more skillful yet not so strong Capdevilla. And so on. Del Bosque leans towards more conservative choices whenever he is faced with two options, and yet, his teams receive more goals against than Luis Aragonés'.

Why is that? Well, Del Bosque has not fully embraced the defensive style that must go with associative football either. Under associative football there is no choice: Spain must defend by keeping the ball and finishing each play, however long it may need to be, with a shot. That is why having Capdevilla is defensely better than having Arbeloa. That is why having Xavi Hernández lead the team accompanied by just one defensive midfielder is better than playing with two defensive midfielders and Xavi Hernández closer to Villa and Torres. It is better because in this way Spain losses less balls, and attacks more effectively, and it becomes safer overall.

The good news is that in the game against Saudi Arabia, the A team played decent although still a bit too slow associative football. Let´s keep an eye on this.

Does Xabi Alonso fit in?

Xabi Alonso is a great player, no question about it. However, his long passes are best suited for a very vertical playing style, such as Liverpool's or Real Madrid's. Luis Aragonés during the Euro2008 used to play Alonso in the second halves, when Spain was already leading the score. His mission was to launch counter attacks with his long passes.

When he plays for Spain in the starting team, he has a tendency to become very disruptive for the combinative style of his team mates. Every player in the team but him is trying to move the ball quickly in short pasess. When the ball reaches Alonso, he would risk it, and often lose it, with a 40m pass. When he has the option of passing the ball quickly to an open team mate close to him, he often waits a little too long. He first has this urge to look for a superb a master pass. When he does not see it possible, then he makes the easy, shorter pass... a little too late. I only wish that he could accept a more modest role in the team and keep the ball circulating quickly. He can do that. He is really versatile. In the end, it is not entirely his fault. He has a coach, Del Bosque, that must persuade him of the importance of playing quick short passes. If only Del Bosque fully believed in the efectiveness of associative football as much as Luis Aragonés did!

Here you have a selection of bad passes (12 in total) and a few extra bad choices Xabi made in the only game Spain lost in the last four years, against the US. It is probably unfair. He does not normally miss so many passes, but it gives you an idea of his tendency to go too direct, as opposed to passing quickly to the closest team mate. The person who did the compliation seems to have a similar opinion. He is being sarcastic with the title "mejores jugadas". Check it out.




To be fair, here you have some good long passes of his:




Del Bosque has played him from the get go, together with another defensive midfielder, either Busquets or Senna. The alternative to playing Alonso would be to play a more combinative player, Fábregas, or else an extra forward instead. Busquets would then have to play right in front of the 2 central defenders, and Xavi Hernández together with Cesc Fábregas in the creative midfield accompanied by Silva and Iniesta, and just one fordward. Or else, only Xavi Hernández as a organizing midfielder (Fábregas on the bench), plus Silva and Iniesta, plus two forwards, Torres and Villa, together.

The problem with all this is that Del Bosque is in love with Xabi Alonso. I am too, by the way, if only he could fully adapt to the collective style!

The good news is that Alonso played much more associatively against Saudi Arabia. He seemed less interested in impressing everyone with his long passes, and much more involved in the collective enterprise of associative football. There are reasons for hope. With such great players, there always are.

If you can read in Spanish, check this out about the purported incompatibility between Xabi Alonso and Xavi Hernández: http://www.as.com/opinion/articulo/raro-xabi-xavi-peguen/dasopi/20090813dasdaiopi_3/Tes

What is to like about associative football?

Associative football is like a ballet or a well coorditante orchestra of 11 skillful players, rithmically and patiently passing the ball as they look for a crack in the opponent´s defense. In a football increasingly dominated by the most athletic teams, associative football challenges this dominant trend by betting for skill, ball possession, and constant attack. It is both a risky bet and beautiful to watch.




Putting together a full national team of players able to play like this, including the guys on the bench, is no easy task. Very few countries in the world can do it. More importantly, very few national coaches dare to do it. Very skillful players are needed, and skillful players are usually small guys. A team playing in this way is a physically light-weight team. It risks getting abused by more muscular teams. Defensively, a light-weight team is also at risk, in danger of being overpowered by stronger and taller teams. Here you can see why this bet is so unusual, and so risky.

Notice that for associative football to take place, each player in the team must have the ability to pass the ball immediately. This is the most valuable skill necessary for associative football-speed of mind. This is hard. Really hard. Most players professional and non-professional, need to stop the ball when they receive it, then rise their head, then lower it and take a look at the ball again, then kick it forward or backwards, then rise the head again and pass the ball. Way too slow! Not good for associative football. The ball needs to circulate as fast as possible. The ball should run more than the players, not the other way around. Only in this way the opponent´s defense can get out of place, distracted, cracked, and scoring becomes possible. Again, this is not achievable by just any team. To put it bluntly-any team can successfully play defensive football, yet only a very good team can play associative football.

Spain is not the first team ever that plays in this way. Brazil national team has played in a slower motion, but very similar way, for decades. In this World Cup it will not play in this way, though. Dunga, the Brazilian coach, favors a more physical style-press, steal and run. Played in faster and more dynamic way, it is prohably the Netherlands in the World Cup of 1974 the point of reference. Ajax of Amsterdam, Arsenal and Barcelona are the three football clubs in Europe that play in this way. And then the Spanish national team, starting about 3 years ago. It all started with this Denmark vs. Spain in October 2007, and in particular, with this goal, scored only after 28 consecutive passes:




There are other very difficult and very effective ways to play football. Italian defensive football played at its best is an art. British and Irish push-and-run direct football played at its best is also an art. Each of these styles require a very different type of player. Each has its followers and its own beauty too.

A few acknowledgments for Spain's associative football

Spain would not play associative football had Barcelona not played it for the last two decades with great success.




And Barcelona would not play it had Johan Cruyff in the 1990s not imposed it as the compulsory style for all divisions of Barcelona, from little kids to grown up pros. Cruyff probably also owes a lot to his former coach, Rinus Mitchel.




The last two brilliant years of Guardiola as a Barcelona coach have also been critical to persuade Del Bosque that this style that he is not so fond of can be just as effective, if not more effective, than any other approach.

Barcelona plays with fantastic footballers bred in town in the younger divisions, such as Valdés, Piqué, Puyol, Xavi, Busquets, Iniesta, Messi, Pedro or Bojan. As any other private and wealthy club, Barcelona can also afford to fill in the remaining possitions with players tha would fit the team style, such as Márquez, Alves, Yaya Touré, Keita, Henry, and Ibrahimovic...

A general acknowledgment is also due to Latin American football, in particular, Brazilian football. From Mexico to Patagonia, all Latin America speaks a smiliar football language--a big appreciation for a very skilfull, associative, and aesthetic way of playing. Thousands of Latin American players have played in the Spanish professional league over the years. Besides, Spain feels very strongly emotionally and culturally connected to Latin America. The Spanish football taste has always been influenced by this connection.

Spain as a national team only played in this combinative style very recently, under the coaching of Luis Aragonés. In the history of Spanish coaching, Aragonés is probably one of the most pragmatic and least style oriented of all coaches. A lover of good defense strategy, steal and run, he was well known for critizicing players who would try to play "pretty", as opposed to "playing well". Who would have thought that he would end up implementing the most beautiful style Spain ever played!

After two years of coaching the Spanish national team without any major success, Aragonés slowly but surely veered towards playing with his best players all at once, without sparing a single one on the bench. The problem was that they all shared a very similar profile: midfielder, small, skillful, associative, imaginative, not very muscular...

Acknowledging and embracing the abundance of this type of player in Spain was not an easy task. National coaches in the past, including Aragonés himself, had shared a common fear: if Spain plays with all the talented guys at once, it may get abused by the muscle power of all other teams. All coaches in the past had chosen to "balance" the national team by sitting down some of the best players on the bech and introducing some muscle instead. This led to decades of a confusing style, at times muscular, at times skillful, but never fully either one.

Luis Aragonés was the first coach to come to the conclusion that the problem of Spain in the past had been one of split-personality: it had aspired to play beautiful football but never played its best players all at once; it bred talent but played with muscle. For the first time in the history of the Spanish team, Aragonés dared to play all the talented little people together, and to make them play the style that fits them best, a style that no Aragonés team in his long coaching career had ever played before-combinative football.

Thank you, Luis, for daring. Thank you, Johan and Barcelona, for your vision. Thank you Rinus, for opening the way.

Switzerland vs. Spain, Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Durban, South Africa

Opening game for Spain and Switzerland in the tournament. This will be a major test for Spain.

Switzerland is coached by Ottmar Hitzfeld, a phe-no-me-nal coach. Hitzfeld won two European Championships (nowaday called Champions Leagues) with two different clubs, Borusia Dortmund (1997) and Bayern Munich (2001). Only two more coaches in the history of European football have accomplished such an achievement (Ernst Happoel and Jose Mourinho).

It will be interesting to see what strategy he uses against Spain. Let me make an educated guess--tight defense and one player forward. That is, the way the US beat Spain in the ConfeCup, and the way that Inter Milan beat Barcelona in the last Champions Leage. Defense, defense, defense, and direct football whenever they steal the ball. With this strategy, Hitzfeld will settle for a tie and hope for a lonely goal in his favor. He will not give up on the possibility of scoring in a counter-attack, a free kick or a shot from far away. For example, Ilner scored from far away in a friendly game against Italy a few days ago



The Swiss defensive mistake in the Italian goal is also quite remarkable.

Thus Switzerland will most likely test Spain's ability to score against a tight defense put up by a muscular, very disciplined, and very well-organized team. Needless to say, if Spain scores first, then the game will change completely.

Spain will meet with this type of defensive strategy again and again in the tournament. Italy and Brazil will eventually play Spain in the exact same way, possibly with the defensive line a little further away from their goalie than Switzerland can afford. It is up to Del Bosque to rehearse as we speak the kind of attacking moves that can cut throught this kind of ultra-defensive strategy. Constant movements without the ball and passing the ball fast are the two mantras that Spain must keep repeating to itself. If it stays true to them, it should beat Switzerland. As for Brazil and Italy... we will see in due time.

Honduras vs. Spain, Monday, June 21, 2010

Honduras has the Latin American taste for skill plus some muscle. Núñez can give good assists, and Wilson Palacios is besides a very strong guy a very skillful player. Against Spain, Honduras will probably take one step back and will look for quick attacking transitions, trying to launch Pavón, Costly or Suazo, very fast runners. If the Catrachos (Hondurans) try to pass the ball to each other too much, instead of quickly launching their forwards, they will loose it right away.

In other words, presumably Honduras will suffer with the Spanish pressure in the midfield. Honduras players will have to move the ball much faster than most of them are used to, or else Spain will steal it pretty quickly. Another challenge for Honduras will be to keep their defensive order and discipline before the Spanish dynamism and passing game. If Honduras is able to keep defenively organized for the entire game and manages to send fast and direct attacks, it may have some chances.

Honduras scored some impressive goals during the qualification round to the World Cup, particularly some signed by Costly from far away



I am certain that any one who has followed Honduras during the qualification round can offer more details.

Spain vs. Chile, Friday june 25th, pre-game thoughts

Chile is a fantastic team, coached by a great Argentine coach, Marcelo Bielsa.

Spain played Chile in November 2008 in a friendly game and won only after a big effort. The final result, 3-0, was misleading. Chile played a phenomenal first half, particularly in pressing Spain in the midfield. Brilliant job, really. Chile missed two very clear scoring opportunities, the first one when the game was 0 - 0, and received two silly goals against, one after a dumb penalty and another one after the ball hit the back of a Chilean defender



Chile also run an excellent qualifying tournament for the World Cup 2010. It qualified second after Brasil.

Chile vs. Spain is the last game of Group H. By the time they meet, both teams may have been qualified for the next round. By then it will be also known for sure how Brazil did in its group. Mind you that the winner of Brazil group will play the second of group H (probably either Chile or Spain), and vice-versa. Spain may very well play with its B team against Chile, just as it did in the Euro2008 against Greece. This gave some very necessary rest to the A team as it kept in good shape and highly motivated the B players. If Spain plays with its A team, Chile can still beat Spain. If Spain plays with its B team, it is even more possible. Thus Chile may very well qualify first of Group H, and Spain may have to play Brazil in the first play-off.

Watch Chile. It may go far into the play-offs. It does not play Spain´s associative foothball, but it plays excellent football too.

Spain 3- Saudi Arabia 2

First friendly game in preparation for the World Cup. It was a very positive training session. I would not pay too much attention to the final score.

REASONS FOR OPTIMISM:


1. Spain played with only one pure forward-Villa in the first half, Llorente in the second half. Why is this good news? Well, this hopefully means that the coach, Del Bosque, finally made up his mind regarding the way Spain will play, and also that he made the right choice. It was about time!

Since he got the job two years ago, Del Bosque has been hesitating a little too much. Deep in his soul he wants to play with wings and strong midfielders and defenders. He is a classic. However, he inherited not just a team, but also a bold and pretty unique style that won the Euro 2008 with a different coach, Luis Aragonés. This bold style demands an accumulation of very skillful yet small people in the midfield, and very few pure fowards, preferably just one, maximum two, but no wings. If the team plays with two pure forwards, then one of them would have to become a midfielder most of the time-that would be Villa-or else take turns. Against Saudi Arabia, Spain started out playing with 5 midfielders-Xabi Alonso, Busquets, Xavi Hernández, Silva and Iniesta. This will hopefully be the initial team in the World Cup. Good news indeed!

2. Iniesta just came back from a serious injury in perfect shape! He was probably the best player of the game.

3. The first goal was the product of fine associative football. It was a great play, beautiful to watch. Here you can see about 2/3 of it, with 10 passes in total before scoring:





They make it seem sooooo easy, when it is actually soooo difficult!

4. In spite of making 6 replacements in the second half and thus changing significantly the design, the team kept playing associative football.

5. Javi Martinez seems fully integrated and had good moves during the time he got. He is the rocky in this team. He is very good, an excellent replacement for Xabi Alonso. I actually like Martinez better, but that deserves another entry further along.

6. Llorente scored the winning goal. Great for having the people on the bench fully motivated and self-confident. Llorente is a very strong guy, over 6 foot tall, and very skillful with his feet (a bit Peter Crouch-ish). Spain may need him to score during some extra time in the near future.

7. Saudi Arabia was really close to tying the game. Excellent wake-up call! The worst enemy of any good team in the World Cup is underestimating the weaker rivals. Del Bosque is well-aware of this. Just remember the ConfeCup, when the US beat Spain. It can happen again, and this friendly game was a good reminder in the right moment.

All right, all right, there are also some REASONS FOR CONCERN. Let´s see:

1. Saudi Arabia scored 2 goals having a 28% of ball possession. Not more than five attacks, two shots, two goals!

2. Casillas is having a very irregular season. He has made too many mistakes here and there this year. In the first goal, he erred again.





His mind is somewhere else. Since he started going out with with a gorgeous journalist-Sara Carbonero-he is not the same saving machine.



It seems that their relationship is going really well. Casillas might start thinking about getting emotionally settled, starting a family... These are big things in anyone´s life. Good things. I completely understand him. Del Bosque, however, may have to make a tough decission if Casillas mind does not come back to football soon. Well, it has happened before. It was precisely Del Bosque when he was coaching Real Madrid who left Casillas on the bench during a final game of a Champions League. It may happen again. This would be a pitty. Casillas in good shape is a better goalie than Reina and Valdés.

3. Del Bosque played Arbeloa on the left. Gee, he is a right-footer! Arbeloa is a very disciplined, fairly strong, defensive player. Spain, however, needs players who can pass the ball after kicking it just once, maximum twice. Arbeloa can hardly do that most of the times, and he cannot do it at all when he is under pressure. He has to stop the ball, look up, then look down again to make sure where the ball is, and then... usually run backwards and pass the ball to a defender behind him 2 or 3 minutes later. This is terrible. The opponent team wins precious time to get set and on their marks again. Constant fast ball circulation is critical for Spain to be able to find a crack in the opponent's defense. Arbeloa does not help much in this regard, quite on the contrary.

Del Bosque does not fully trust Capdevilla defensively. All right, Capdevilla is older, not as fast and not as strong as Arbeloa. However, Capdevilla is a lefty, and he is in the top 10 of the Spanish League in his average of correct passing. And he is a good scorer too! Most importantly, Spain ought to defend with ball possession rather than with muscle. We Spain losses the ball, then the closest players massively press the opponent. Spain does not need one muscular defender on the left, but cooperation and coordination. Hopefully Del Bosque will dare to play Capdevilla instead.

Enough for today. This is the kind of reflection I will be sharing here. Please forgive the inelegance of my English and the linguistic mistakes you will certainly find in my writing. I would love to hear what you have to say. I am here to share, and also to learn.