Graham's Blog

Running right alongside Brazil 2014, this is my day-by-day story of how Spain won the last World Cup. You can catch up on previous posts.

These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

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It is a morning at the movies, but without the popcorn. Paraguay are the main attraction and Spain’s video editor, Pablo Pena, has been splicing together the best cuts which go with the analysis Paco Jiménez and Antonio Fernández have brought back from scouting the South Americans’ penalty shoot-out win over Japan.

Spain’s players felt liberated against Portugal, much less tense in a knockout situation than throughout Group H. In their view it has been their best, most fluent and most attacking performance. FIFA’s match report bears that out: 19 efforts at goal and 10 of them on target.

The video shows that Paraguay like to smother opposition and force their three lines tightly together; this looks like it will be something similar to the bruising experience against Chile, but without the 15 minutes played under a white flag.

What has emerged is that Spain do not stick firmly to the 4-2-3-1 formation. Alonso will liberate himself by 10 or 15 metres, Busquets will cover. Iniesta will come in off the right wing and often an offensive trio of Alonso, Xavi and Iniesta will be searching behind Torres and Villa in an urgent quest for space. The final frontier.

However, while Iniesta has been injured or recovering and while teams set out to frustrate and foul Spain, there has been huge responsibility on Xavi’s shoulders. Whatever the formation, his position is not identical to the one he plays for FC Barcelona. Nor is he seeing so much of the ball. Often possession is coming to him either with his back to goal or when he is on the half-turn. He is being asked to play slightly more like Iniesta does, in the same spaces with the same lack of time, not always facing the play – looking for space rather than creating it by conducting the flow of the ball. He was rewarded with a man-of-the-match citation against Portugal, but still there is widespread preoccupation that perhaps he could perform better and that he looks troubled, unhappy even.

“Even the boss has checked with me that I’m okay,” he admits. “People think I’m tense, but it’s just that I’m intense.”

Running right alongside Brazil 2014, this is my day-by-day story of how Spain won the last World Cup. You can catch up on previous posts.

These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

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Back at Potch, everyone is free until 7pm, training is recuperative and there are now only three guys, Víctor Valdés, Pepe Reina and the injured Raúl Albiol, who have not had game time. However, Reina’s moment is just around the corner.

Adidas are team sponsors, extremely adept at keeping both federation and players happy with their work and they would like to borrow the studio we have set up in a lecture theatre on the Potchefstroom campus. It’s how I meet Fernando Llorente for the first time.

The striker is contracted to Adidas and about to do a big interview for their site. While the crew set up the interview, he asks me where on earth my accent is from. He reckons I sound like the former Liverpool striker Michael Robinson, who starred for the team Llorente supports – Osasuna. We talk about Celts and the links between the north of Spain and Scotland, where I come from. Then it’s time for his interview. It’s not the last time we will hear of Llorente’s family ties.

Un secreto a voces in Spanish literally means ‘a secret being spoken about’: an open secret. That is what David Silva’s €33m move from Valencia (taking that club’s sales to €73m since May) to Manchester City has become. It is confirmed today and there is nobody in Potch who thinks it hasn’t affected Del Bosque’s decision-making process in giving Silva no game time since the Swiss defeat.

Running right alongside Brazil 2014, this is my day-by-day story of how Spain won the last World Cup. You can catch up on previous posts.

These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

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Spain v Portugal – World Cup last 16

Uno y dos y tres … ganar y ganar y ganar!

Since Euro 2008 these players have been telling us: “Tournaments are won by the lads on the bench.” Firstly, every player is responsible for maintaining a fun, professional and supportive atmosphere. Secondly, those who will not start and may not even come on must work flat out to ensure the coach has the maximum choices and to keep the starters on their toes. Finally, and most obviously, substitutions can change matches.

After some fun sparring in the first half, Portugal are being pinned back but Spain can’t make the breakthrough. Portugal’s centre-backs, Bruno Alves and Ricardo Carvalho, have been mugging Fernando Torres and moving forward with the ball. Del Bosque wants them subjugated. A technically talented Navarran, who also happens to be 6ft 4ins and 14 stone, is just the ticket. Fernando Llorente comes on and the sky seems lower.

There are 55 minutes on the clock when Llorente, in full training kit and sitting on the bench, is told he is going on. By the 58th minute he is in play and by 59 minutes and 57 seconds, after a 15-pass move, Ramos curves a cross which drops between Alves and Carvalho. Llorente throws himself full length, heads on target and forces another fine save from Eduardo. Spain smell blood.

Llorente ties up two, sometimes three players, head-flicking another cross just inches wide, holding the ball up, pushing Portugal further back and Spain further forward.

David Villa: “I’d never seen such overwhelming power in my life. He just gobbled up both their centre-backs for the last half hour of the game, drawing them to him and opening up space for those of us around him. That’s no mean feat because both of them are big guys, very physical in the one-on-one clashes, particularly Alves.”

When the breakthrough goal comes it is down to the disruption Llorente has caused Portugal’s defensive structure. The move starts when Piqué sends a marvellous 40-yard pass for Villa, wide left. The ball is moved to Alonso, who pings an audacious pass to Iniesta, despite the midfielder being covered. Iniesta turns and tries to nudge the ball into Llorente’s feet. Carvalho stretches a leg to intervene, but there are now six Portugal defenders within a metre and a half of Llorente. It’s ludicrous. Carvalho’s intervention comes straight back to Iniesta and the Barça man can see that because even the right-back, Ricardo Costa, has been dragged to Llorente, Villa is now completely free on the left of the box. Iniesta nudges another pass, but Xavi is in the way.

Xavi: “I’d seen Andrés’s eyes, I knew that there must be a player behind me and that was who he was aiming for, so I didn’t take a touch, I just flicked it on.”

This is the half-touch football Xavi and company have been taught since they were kids at Barcelona’s La Masia academy. Charly Rexach, legendary winger and Johan Cruyff’s assistant, often roared at his apprentices, “just use a halftouch!” when he wanted the ball to circulate still more rapidly than their fabled one-touch football.

David Villa: “I was going to hit it with my right because that’s how the ball looked like it would arrive, but Xavi’s touch sent it longer and on to my left.”

When Iniesta passes, Villa is onside. When Xavi flicks the ball it’s tight as hell – television pictures have him offside by centimetres, but the flag remains down. Eduardo, who has a heroic match, blocks with his knees, but they must be made of marshmallow because the ball flops back down in front of Villa and he stabs it in, off the crossbar, this time with his right boot.

As the whistle goes I’m at the mouth of the tunnel, called to stand in for the on-pitch international television interview with Del Bosque and Casillas if reporter Sara Carbonero does not make it round from her match position in time. As each of the Portuguese pass by, the pain of defeat is more obvious. Some are crying, one kicks the wall, another is swearing at the top of his voice.

Spain 1 Portugal 0

Spain: Casillas, Ramos, Piqué, Puyol, Capdevila, Alonso (Marchena 90+3), Busquets, Iniesta, Xavi, Villa (Pedro 88), Torres (Llorente 58) Goal: Villa 63

Portugal: Eduardo, Costa, Carvalho, Alves, Coentrao, Tiago, Pepe (Mendes 72), Meireles, Simao (Liedson 72), Almeida (Danny 58), Ronaldo

Running right alongside Brazil 2014, this is my day-by-day story of how Spain won the last World Cup. You can catch up on previous posts.

These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

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Spain have come full circle. Six years ago, La Roja won their first match at Euro 2004 but were eliminated from the group stage by their neighbours and tournament hosts, Portugal. It was a humiliating moment. Far more significant than Iberian vendettas is the fact that the defeat in 2004 ushered in Luis Aragonés and the beginning of a cycle of success. Knocking Portugal out of the World Cup would continue a steep upward trajectory. Cristiano Ronaldo, club-mate to Casillas, Alonso and Ramos, is the main threat.

Gerard Piqué: “Ronaldo helped me immensely when I first moved to Manchester. He spoke more English and the two of us could also communicate in Spanish. He was fantastic and we actually supported one another a bit. Television has a role in him being misinterpreted – Cristiano is very sure of himself, he always wants to be the leader on the pitch, so people who only see him on television can misjudge him as arrogant when he is not. As a person and a friend he is fantastic.”

Piqué had won his last three match-ups against Ronaldo, without conceding a goal – in the 2009 Champions League final against Manchester United and two Clásicos following Ronaldo’s world-record transfer to Real Madrid. “What’s important is never to give him space, or time to think, to make sure you don’t commit a foul and that you don’t let him get running at you with the ball. Then he’s next to unstoppable.”

Portugal and Spain are accommodated within five minutes of each other. Ronaldo and company are in a lovely, vine covered, boutique hotel which specialises in fine wines. Spain are in another rudimentary tower block. It appears that so long as they can sleep, wash in hot water, eat together and be fairly sure nothing will be stolen from them, all is well.

Running right alongside Brazil 2014, this is my day-by-day story of how Spain won the last World Cup. You can catch up on previous posts.

These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

—

With just over 48 hours to go to the match in Cape Town, all the evidence at training indicates that Fernando Torres is winning his battle to convince Del Bosque he should start against Portugal. So far, everything about the World Cup has been going right for El Nino, other than the inconvenient fact that the tournament has come along two or three weeks too early for optimum recuperation.

Wherever he goes he is treated like a pop star. South Africa lost Benni McCarthy, their talented and talismanic striker, just before the World Cup and the nation’s football supporters seem to have adopted Torres as their favourite No.9. Girls want to touch him, police want his autograph, security staff want a photo with him and if he walks around the town of Potchefstroom crowds of schoolkids, on holiday for a month, flock after him like gulls following a trawler. It’s a spectacle.

It seems crazy, but many modern young sportsmen, particularly in Spain, know little or nothing about the struggle against racism here – or even what apartheid was. Torres is different.

“When I play any tournament I study the country and I have done that with South Africa. I  know a bit about the old history, apartheid, Mandela’s ANC struggle, and that means we have to show support and respect for the country’s push to move on from those crimes.

“The World Cup gives this part of Africa an unmissable opportunity to feel integrated into the world and no longer a scapegoat, so it is our duty to make the tournament a success and joyful.

“The Chile match was an intense game but beautiful, the kind I am totally accustomed to in England. I’ve had 90 minutes across three games in nearly three months and you can train to your heart’s content but it doesn’t bring you that finesse or match sharpness required to score. The World Cup is unforgiving and won’t wait for me, but without game time I won’t find my form.”

This, bluntly, is Del Bosque’s big dilemma.