Day 1, World Cup 2010: “Let South Africa quake, Spain have arrived.”

On day one of World Cup 2014, I’m starting a day-by-day retelling of how Spain won in South Africa, four years ago. I hope you stay with it over the next month – and I hope you enjoy!
These stories are from Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja’s Historic Treble, by Graham Hunter

As La Roja land on South African soil, Captain Gómez-Paratcha bids his passengers farewell with the words: “Let South Africa quake, Spain have arrived.”

Not long after, outside the student residences of NW University, where Linford Christie, Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes have trained, Spain’s weary squad sit in the low sunshine of the Guateng autumn squinting at the Zulu performers in traditional costumes, dancing, slapping their wellington boots and ululating.

Post-siesta, La Roja train. They rondo the kinks out of their muscles and begin some pressing exercises, but there are only 22 of them.

It is dark, it is cold, the trees rustle in the gentle wind and, then, across the Fanie du Toit rugby pitch, through the security perimeter and onto the football pitch trots Andrés Iniesta, the missing splash of red. By his side is Hugo Camarero, the federation physio charged with pacing the midfielder’s rehab. Recuperation from the latest version of the thigh injury that has decimated his season at Barcelona is scheduled to go beyond June 16 and the Group H opener against Ottmar Hitzfeld´s Switzerland.

However, when the federation doctor, Oscar Celada, tells us that “Iniesta is driven by such hunger to get back and play against Switzerland that we might have to try and put the brakes on him,” it is not a code we need an Enigma machine to decipher.

 

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