• Preview: Spain is already in the quarterfinals: now win to avoid France

Back from training before facing Hungary for the first group place on Monday (6:00 p.m., TDP), the windows of the bus are relief for the confinement that Spain accumulates in the World Cup in Egypt, but what you see, even there Far on the horizon, it is the same landscape that surrounds the hotel.

"There is nothing here, only desert and many works", they explain from the national team, and recall experiences of Qatar, of the 2015 World Cup: "It looks a lot like".

The emirate used the championship to inaugurate a city that did not exist, Losail, and now the same, although in a big way, in a giant, in a pharaonic way.

A few years ago, the president of Egypt,

Abdelfatah al Sisi

, demanded the Handball World Cup to present an ambitious project, the New Administrative Capital, a city capable of lightening the chaos of Cairo, hosting ministries and cheering up the country's wealthy classes, and that is why they are there

Raúl Entrerríos, Joan Cañellas

and company.

"In the middle of nowhere," they summarize, 45 kilometers from the daily chaos of Cairo. As it happened in Qatar, the works have taken longer than expected - Chinese capital has entered to accelerate them - and the World Cup is being disputed between dunes and ditches, disgusting scenery.

"But hey, even better, because if we were in a beautiful city we wouldn't be able to visit it either," explains one of the nine members of the Spanish staff, and he's also right.

The coronavirus, you know.

And the measures that show that the Olympic Games can be played in the middle of a pandemic, but that there will always be shocks.

Of the many positives that forced the withdrawal of the United States or Cape Verde to the casual encounters between rival teams in the lobby of the St. Regis Almasa hotel in Nueva Capital that always stress the organization.In the interior of the huge resort, one of In the few buildings that have been completed in Nueva Capital - the city does not even have a name - players can walk around with a mask and even chat on their feet and from a distance with members of other teams, but they cannot use facilities such as the pool or sit down for coffee.

If they want to stop, they must go to their rooms or to a room reserved for each team where they eat, watch television and play cards.

Many players have finished the Netflix catalog and, without being able to go out to buy, books are exchanged, such as The problem of the three bodies of

Liu Cixin

, what happened with

Ferran Solé

and now it is in the hands of

Angel Fernandez

.

The daily PCR is mandatory and in the pavilion the measures are extreme, such as the disinfection of the benches that is carried out at halftime of each match. "From this World Cup we will only remember what happens on the track," they point out in Spain, which has not yet it has not had a single positive, and there, on the track, you can see a landscape very different from the dryness of the outside.

With the classification for the quarterfinals already assured, the national team will be able to choose strategy in this Monday's match.

You can go out with the essential players to try to beat Hungary, finish first in the group and face Norway in the tie.

Or he can reserve the veterans as he did against Uruguay, accept a possible defeat and face France. The French team arrives with full victories, but is no longer as fearsome as it was.

Whatever Spain does, the only thing that is clear is that it will be able to celebrate little.

At the end of the games, each team has only half an hour to celebrate or regret whatever, shower, change and return to the St. Regis Almasa hotel in Nueva Capital, in the desert, to lock themselves in their rooms.

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