- Classification. This is the group of Spain
Scotland is what it is. A handful of hard-working players with a lot of self-love and their own football. Scotland recognizes itself in what it has always been, and also boasts proud of its essences in times, these, where the old is suspect. Defending very strong, running a lot, putting his heart into every ball, he snacked on a Spain that, just unlike his rival, does not know what his essences are. He doesn't have fury anymore, he's lost it a long time ago, but he doesn't have football either. And if you have neither fury nor football, if you have neither plan A nor plan B, it is nothing. The qualification for the European Championship is not in danger, because two of each group pass and just look at the rest, but the match at Hampden Park leaves the feeling that Spain does not know who it is. On a guerrilla night, of pushing, clashing, kicking, elbowing and sweating, he shrank in a bad way and affirms that the horizons are gray. Grey being optimistic.
De la Fuente switched to 8 out of 11. From Norway, only Kepa and the two pivots, Rodri and Merino, repeated. A severe shaking of the team. We will have to wait and see if he liked Norway less than he acknowledged in public or that this is his way of directing when there are two games so close in time. Making such a number of modifications may not be so important at this point in his reign, because with half a dozen trainings the automatisms will have them all equally well (or badly) assimilated. There appeared players like Ceballos or Joselu, revitalizing in Malaga, but also the entire defense, something unusual.
Whether for that reason or for another, the match began as it had been many years since a Spanish match had started. He gave the ball to Scotland, or Scotland took it away and Spain did not know how to take it away, it does not matter. It was 10 minutes (only 10) in which Steve Clarke's team denied the Scottish essences with a football of ball at the foot and calm transition. One of them ended with a slip by Pedro Porro (unpresentable his first half) that allowed Robertson to win the baseline. The center was finished off by McTominay to make the first.
FRIGHT
The locals still had time to give another scare to the selection when Christie traveled 50 meters of field with the ball stuck to his foot. In the front, he miraculously threw her out. Until that moment there had been no news of Spain, shrunk and minor against an enthusiastic rival pushed by the wonderful atmosphere of a stadium like Hampden Park, where time passes, but more slowly. Little by little the selection was remade, which finished (Joselu did) for the first time in the 20th minute. It was a header, a foretaste of the route the team would use from there.
Another shot from the same protagonist to the crossbar, one from Rodri after a corner... Spain had gone on to control the match with Ceballos, who was the one who lowered his position to start the game. With him things were somewhat better and Spain made Scotland retreat, comfortable already in its traditional role, that of a retracted, very intense team that turned every dispute, every aerial ball, into a war. The selection claimed two penalties to Joselu, who was involved in all the troubles, but the referee said that nothing at all. With those three occasions the team of De la Fuente had deserved the draw, which however could have gone to the locker room with a worse face if had taken advantage of a hand to hand with Kepa born in a ball without rhyme or reason of a defender who caught the Spanish centers looking at each other. Scotland kept squeezing, harassing, suffocating. His lifelong football. He endured as Spain could, which was already showing signs of not knowing what to do.
On the return, as in the first half, he fit as soon as he started. Again a blunder of the right side, who was no longer Porro but was Carvajal, allowed McTominay to repeat. The coach was trying things, removing this and that, putting one and the other, but nothing. Spain always clashed with the Scots, feverish for their public, stronger, more willing to shock. Every ball was a tumult, every foul, a waste of time. The selection was blocked. Neither inside nor out, neither above nor below. Neither on one side nor on the other. She had been subdued by a handful of courageous people to whom the football of the last century sufficed. Blessed football, current against teams without personality.
According to The Trust Project criteria
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- Spain national football team
- Luis de la Fuente