World Cup: Day 22

Ahhhhh, I’m late, I’m late, blah blah, blah, here we go.

Spain 3-0 Austria

Spain heard you all saying France were running away with this.

Spain picked the side that beat Saudi Arabia 4-0 and should probably be regarded as their first choice eleven. True to their ideals of how football should be played, they got the ball in the net through a meat wall corner that VAR then ruled out. I continue to enjoy that the World Cup isn’t letting these things slide the way the Premier League does. It meant they had to play some real football to get ahead. Pedri shifts it out wide to Marc Cucurella, who plays a square pass to Mikel Oyarzabal to score. This was exactly the things I keep talking about: width, runners, linking well. England’s wide outlets often feel static and disconnected from the rest of the game. Spain’s players out there (and Lamine Yamal was important earlier in the sequence) organically connect to the players making movements in the box.

(This isn’t an England newsletter, but it helps that Cucurella was offering a left footed option. England never have a left footer popping up in those areas because Nico O’Reilly doesn’t get to the byline. It’s always a right footed left winger interacting with right footed central midfielders and attackers.)

We saw Spain work it wide again for the second goal, passing in triangles until Álex Baena was in the space to play a left-footed cross for Pedro Porro. They finally got the third when Cucurella again drifted out to the left to put in a cross from deep for Oyarzabal. They just kept hitting that left flank to great effect.

Austria were a pretty gentle tactical fit for Spain here. Ralf Rangnick isn’t exactly known for sitting in a block and frustrating sides. There was room to run in behind here. But Spain just smashed it anyway. Now they get to face Portugal on Monday. Spain are definitely the team from the Iberian peninsula I’ve been much more impressed with.

Portugal 2-1 Croatia

Lamine Yamal was one year old when Luka Modrić and Cristiano Ronaldo first played against each other. It was 0-0. It probably wasn’t as good as this.