Call-up for the Chile friendly and Liechtenstein Qualifier

August 25th, 2011 | by: Ade C. | Comments Off

Del Bosque has made public the list for the friendly against Chile (September 2) and the Euro 2012 qualifier against Liechtenstein (September 6)… and boy, are we surprised.

We used to complain about Our Wise Walrus' call-ups being all the same...

Goalkeepers: Iker Casillas (Real Madrid), Pepe Reina (Liverpool FC), Víctor Valdés (FC Barcelona)

Defenders: Álvaro Arbeloa (Real Madrid), Raúl Albiol (Real Madrid), Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid), Alberto Botia (Sporting de Gijón), Álvaro Domínguez (Atlético de Madrid), Martín Montoya (Barça B).

Midfielders: Xabi Alonso (Real Madrid), Sergio Busquets (FC Barcelona), Santiago Cazorla (Mágala CF), Andrés Iniesta (FC Barcelona), Thiago Alcántara (FC Barcelona), Xavi Hernández (FC Barcelona), Javi Martínez (Athletic de Bilbao), Cesc Fábregas (FC Barcelona).

Forwards: David Villa (FC Barcelona), David Silva (Manchester City), Fernando Llorente (Athletic de Bilbao), Fernando Torres (Chelsea CF), Pedro Rodríguez (FC Barcelona), Álvaro Negredo (Sevilla FC), Juan Mata (Chelsea CF).

Sign of Spain’s problems in defence -and Our Wise Walrus’ insanity (?)- is that with Piqué, Puyol and Iraola injured, we’ve been forced to bring a player from a youth team -albeit, a very successful, second-division youth team- in: Martín Montoya, who admittedly did very well at the U21s Euros in the RB position. Sporting’s Botía and Atlético de Madrid’s Domínguez also sneak in, bringing some new blood to our back four and making the call-up more than a Barça-RM mix-up… which could be helpful, considering that the Clásico problems seem to be getting worse, not better.

The midfield and forwards, though, stay the same, even with Fernando Torres’ poor form and Llorente’s not-so-great last showing. What Roberto Soldado -to make an example- needs to do to get a call-up, we don’t want to speculate.

In any case, we hope this list is enough to get us two good results. Slipping from the FIFA rankings Number 1 in favour of The Netherlands due to our bad results in friendlies, though ultimately meaningless -who won the World Cup, after all?- still rankles.