Day 23, World Cup 2010: Paraguay 0 Spain 1

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

Pepe Reina is a fanatic for detail. The keeper will study striker after striker on DVD, particularly their one-on-one finishes and their penalty taking. Óscar Cardozo’s Benfica have been knocked out of the Europa League quarter-final by Reina, Fernando Torres and Liverpool this season, but only after the Paraguayan striker scored two penalties in the first leg. Each of them was tucked away firmly to the goalkeeper’s left. Having experienced that and seen the DVD compilation, Reina mentions to Casillas pre-match that if Paraguay get a penalty, or if the match goes to a shoot-out, then Cardozo’s default action is to shoot to his right and the goalkeeper’s left.

Paraguay get their first corner in in the 56th minute; Piqué dozes for a split second, Cardozo gets free and the Catalan hauls him down to the floor. Penalty.

Xavi thinks: ‘If they score this, we are practically out.’

Villa thinks: ‘Iker will save this. I’m going to be ready when he does.’

But Casillas is not working alone. Reina is up and jigging about, trying to get his colleague’s attention. Reina roars at Casillas: “Remember!”

Then, just like in Vienna two years earlier, he leaves him be.

Casillas, a demon card player according to Xavi, runs through the percentages in his mind.

In their last match, Paraguay went through in a penalty shoot-out against Japan and Cardozo shot to his left, beating the keeper’s right-handed dive. But his favoured style is to shoot to his own right and the keeper’s left.

Cardozo will know I saw the Japan penalty, so he is thinking about changing sides. In all the tension, he may have forgotten that Reina saw two of his penalties up close this season. I’m going left.

He does, he saves and when the ball is heading back up the field Reina is applauding his friend, and Casillas points over at him with both hands: Your good call.

Villa is ready. As play flows upfield, the striker gets in front of Alcaraz and wins Spain a penalty when the defender bundles him over. Xabi Alonso buries it, but Carlos Alberto Batres González does not even see the net bulge. The Guatemalan referee has been watching the edge of the penalty box. Three players appear to encroach but the Guatemalan believes that the furthest forward is a Spaniard, Cesc Fabregas.

Before the match Paraguay’s legendary keeper José Chilavert said of Batres: “He is the worst referee in the history of Guatemala and it’s shameful that he has been given this quarter-final.”

While Spanish bodies pile on top of the jubilant Alonso, Batres is blowing his whistle. Alonso must take it again.

This time the Spaniard knows he has not hit it properly and he’s doing a jerky little hop and skip with his arms stretched out before Justo Villar has even dived to his left to palm the ball away, as if his whole body is screaming: ‘Oh no!’

However, this time Fabregas has not encroached. He is first to the rebound. He gets a touch to take the ball past the dive of the goalkeeper and Villar takes him out. If you look in the Oxford English Dictionary for the definition of the word penalty, it will read: Cesc Fabregas. Minute 63. Spain vs Paraguay. World Cup 2012. But Batres has something in his eye, possibly a symphony orchestra, two Mini Coopers, a packet of Penguin biscuits and a horse, because he doesn’t see it.

Twenty minutes later, Andrés Iniesta hypnotises the Paraguay defence. He beats two defenders and draws another two toward him, the question marks visible above their befuddled heads as he cedes the ball to Pedro, one-on-one with the goalkeeper.

After all that has happened here, and all the history that has perennially prevented La Roja from progressing past the quarter-finals of any World Cup, all of Spain knows that even with the game tied at 0-0, Pedro must score or they will surely lose – to another penalty, an offside goal, a shoot-out or a dog running on to the pitch and dribbling the ball past Iker Casillas. That is how it goes with Spain and World Cups.

They think of Italy’s Mauro Tassotti elbowing the face of Luis Enrique in 1994. They think of Garba Lawal of Nigeria trickling a shot past Andoni Zubizarreta in 1998. They think of the Egyptian referee, Gamal Al-Ghandour, disallowing Fernando Morientes’ header in the 2002 defeat by South Korea on the false premise that Joaquín’s cross had gone out of play.

Pedro must score.

But Pedro hits the post.

Hold on a minute, though. The ball rebounds right to the feet of the tournament’s top scorer, the Golden Boot winner from Euro 2008, the most reliable striker Spain have ever had. David Villa.

Thirty million Spaniards breathe out in relief, cut short their curses and prayers, and they wait.

Villa opens up his body shape, strikes coolly with the inside of his right boot and the ball implacably seeks out the opposite post to the one Pedro just hit and rolls obstinately along the goal-line.

Twenty four hours earlier, in the middle of Potchefstroom’s Fanie du Toit rugby ground, Villa sat in front of me, with that very ball in his hands. He looked at the printed insignia: Jabulani, Kick-Off, Match 60, July 3, 2010 Paraguay vSpain. Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg, and held it up to the camera.

Asked to dedicate a couple of words to the fans back in Spain he said: “I got the winner in the last match and, tomorrow, I hope to score with this football to put us in the World Cup semi-final.”

And just as it reaches the post, which is still shuddering from Pedro’s initial shot, the Jabulani clips it and rolls over the line – Spain’s quarter-final jinx is dead, buried and gone for ever.

Adios Tassotti, adios Garba Lawal, adios Al-Ghandour.

Spain are going to the World Cup semi-finals for the first time in their history.

Paraguay 0 Spain 1

Paraguay: J Villar, Verón, Da Silva, Alcaraz, Merel, Cáceres (Barrios 84),

Santana, Barreto (Vera 64), Riveros, Valdez (Santa Cruz 72), Cardozo

Spain: Casillas, Ramos, Piqué, Puyol (Marchena 84), Capdevila, Busquets,

Xavi, Alonso (Pedro 75), Iniesta, Torres (Fabregas 56), Villa

Goal: Villa 83

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