Albiol in…Marchena or Puyol Out.
First, just want to say I’m back blogging for the first time in over a month. It was honestly good to get away for a while. Sometimes you just run out of steam and now I’m ready for Spain to win the Euros. And I’ve been given a grant to go to Catalonia to take a Catalan class, so it looks like I’ll be there for the Euro Semi-Finals!! God willing.
Today in AS the discussion focused on the addition to the starting 11 of Valencinista Raul Albiol, who Cesar would know better than all of us. The question now is for who? The back duo of Marchena and Puyol is giving Aragonés some doubts as of late, especially with Marchena’s big mistake in the 2-1 win against Peru.
With all this talk about Albiol entering into the list against the United States, he had this to say about his La Furia teammate.
“No se puede culpar a Marchena de nada. Esas cosas pasan en el fútbol, más vale eso que tener un fallo de colocación, que eso sí es más difícil de corregir. Estoy aquí para ayudar al equipo, ya sea dentro del campo o fuera, e intentar aprovechar los minutos que me dé el entrenador, como todos. Si no juego, a apoyar a mis compañeros, respetarlos y estar con ellos a muerte, porque nos jugamos muchísimo y tenemos todos la misma ilusión, que es hacer un gran campeonato. Me considero un defensa más, no sé si el tercero o el cuarto. Afronto esta Eurocopa con la misma ilusión que el resto, aquí vamos todos en la misma dirección”.
Basically, for lack of translation, he doesn’t blame Marchena for his mistake and says that ‘things like that happen in soccer.’ And that if he doesn’t play, he will be supporting his teammates and be with them until death.
A stand up guy, not throwing his teammate under the bus. But, that doesn’t solve the problem for Puyol or Marchena. As Luis is still tinkering with the squad, we will see on Wednesday who he puts into the squad, but as of now, it’s still a guessing game.
Who do you think it should be? Should Albiol be given his chance,or should it still be Puyol and Marchena in the back?
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The centre of defence has been giving Aragonés headaches for some time now. Puyol has had a poor season, regardless of his leadership abilities and the national side has had something like 9 different central defender partnerships in the last 10 games. With the midfield still not clicking and performing as they do individually at club level I’m just not at all hopeful when we come up against the stronger nations.
Posted from
Germany




I say give Albiol a chance. Marchena isn’t a poor player, but I think he needs a period on the bench to work hard to return to the level he’s capable of playing at (for club and country). Central defense is definitely Spain’s weakest area. Thankfully, Casillas knows a thing or two about playing behind a porous defence so all is not lost.
Posted from
United States




Daniel, looks like we’re both making the rounds from the Valencia blog to this one. No way Puyol is taken out of the lineup. Although this hasn’t been his best season, he is a leader and a great defender. His club team sucks D, but all is forgiven when it comes to the national team. Marchena, on the other hand, plays for the greatest club on earth, but he does not deserve to start. The only reason he does is that his position is Spain’s weakest link, as Daniel said. All in all, we’ll be fine. I’m gonna be so torn tomorrow during tomorrow’s match. Since Spain is going to play in an important tournament in a week, and thus needs to be in form, I can root for them to play well and win without being un-American.




I completely agree with Daniel — bench Marchena. We need to see some hunger.
One bright spot in defense from today’s game — Navarro looking good. =)


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