Spain v England Match Preview – Taming the Lions

As everyone knows, the highly anticipated friendly against England is coming up in less than a week, on February 11th. This will be the first time since playing Denmark in 1993 that the Spanish national team will be playing in El Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán located in Sevilla.

Three days ago Vicente Del Bosque annouced that Valencia duo David Villa and David Silva, as well as Sevilla duo Diego Capel and Jesús Navas would be called up to the squad for match against the Three Lions. Just yesterday however López Caro, manager of the Spanish U-21 Team announced that Capel and Mata were included in their squad to face Norway in a friendly being held in Cartagena, Andalucía on Tuesday February 10th. The Spanish “sub-21″ team is preparing for the qualififying games as they look to qualify for the U-21 European Championships being held in Denmark in 2011. Also announced yesterday was Del Bosque is concerned with Navas’ homesickness and he feels that calling him up to the first team could be a mistake as he will not be able to travel when La Selección travel to other European nations for our upcoming World Cup 2010 qualifiers. Vicente said that he will only call Navas up to the match against England if he can prove that he will be able to travel with the selection in the future without risk of getting homesick and having to return home. This sparked anger amongst the Sevilla management as the Rojiblancos’ sporting director “Monchi” said “Jesús is much better now and the last time he felt the affects of his homesickness was when we played Fenerbahçe in Istanbul, and that was only because we were there for 10 days.” “The selection does not travel to other countries for this long so as far as I am concerned Jesús will be fine.”. Clearly it looks like Navas has come a long way and his problem has much improved. He has been one of Sevilla’s and La Liga’s outstanding performances thus far in the season and would have been called up to the national squad a long time ago if it wasn’t for his homesickness problem. Unfortunately though today as the lineups were announced Jesús Navas was not included which personally I’m aboslutely furious at. It would have been the perfect opportunity to slip him into the squad as it’ll be in his hometown of Sevilla and he would have been able to play in front of the fans that sing his name every week and truly performed well for Del Bosque. I also feel bad for Jesús as Mr. Vicente annouced some months ago that Navas will be in the squad as he wants him to break into the national team.

The squad to face England is as followed.
Goalkeepers
Iker Casillas (Real Madrid)
José Manuel Reina (Liverpool)
Defenders
Raúl Albiol (Valencia)
Álvaro Arbeloa (Liverpool)
Joan Capdevila (Villarreal)
Juanito (Real Betis)
Carlos Marchena (Valencia)
Gerard Piqué (Barcelona)
Carles Puyol (Barcelona)
Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid)
Midfielders
Xabi Alonso (Liverpool)
Sergi Busquets (Barcelona)
Santiago Cazorla (Villarreal)
Xavi Hernández (Barcelona)
Andrés Iniesta (Barcelona)
Albert Riera (Liverpool)
David Silva (Valencia)
Marcos Senna (Villarreal)
Forwards
Daniel Güiza (Fenerbahçe)
Fernando Llorente (Athletic Club)
Fernando Torres (Liverpool)
David Villa (Valencia)

No surprise in any of the lineup really but my personal opinion is that Diego Capel is better than Albert Riera and Jesús Navas is far superior to Santi Cazorla in both skill and speed, shame the Sevilla wingers couldn’t make the lineup.

There’s no room for Guti, Raúl nor Joaquín which puts a grand smile on my face because quite frankly they’ve never done the business for Spain before so why do they deserve another chance? “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is the perfect aphorism to describe Del Bosque’s selection as most of the players in the squad were also in Luis Aragonés’ that won the European Championships this past summer. Also, dispite Capel and Navas not making the squad I am pleased that Athletic Bilbao striker Fernando Llorente who has been on fire as late (scoring against Sevilla in the Copa del Rey two days ago) is included in the squad. Also included in the squad for the first time are Barça duo Gerard Piqué and Sergi Busquets who have obviously played a large part in the Catalans’ phenomenal season thus far. It’s good to see that Del Bosque is at least starting to bring some youth through the system because by the time Euro 2012 comes around we will have some players who will be getting on in years and not able to perform like its 2008 all over again.

Rafael Benítez, manager of Liverpool is concerned with Del Bosque’s decision to call Fernando Torres and has voiced his concern today as he feels El Niño should be allowed to rest having just come back from a recent injury. Del Bosque defended himself saying that Torres is a tremendous athlete and will be fine (encouraging enough Liverpool fans?).

Staying in England now as today the Three Lions’ Italian manager Fabio Capello said that his men are stronger than Spain and will beat them. Hmm, well let’s adress a few things here Mr. Capello, 5 of our players play in the Premier League against English talent every week and have been extremely successful, how many English players play in Spain and can call themselves successful? England is a physically superior side, I’ll give them that, but which players know how to play against Spanish quick and skilled opposition? None. It’s good that Capello has faith in his inconsistent squad but sorry Fabio, you’re comments are way too optimistic.

With England’s recent success under Mr. Capello there is no doubt that is this clash will be pretty difficult but currently as the best team in Europe I don’t doubt for one second that we’ll come out on top. Realistically I’m predicting a 3-1 scorline in our favour with goals from Torres, Villa, and Xavi. I’ll have more updates on the match as it happens.