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.