The chill ran down the back of the entire Spanish team. When Japan turned the score around and Spain was eliminated for a while, Luis Enrique felt “five minutes of panic.” His team did not know how to manage that “chaos”. «Japan has passed us over in two actions. It has been unpleasant », he lamented. It had to be Germany, in the other group game against Costa Rica, that saved Spain. “Today there is nothing to celebrate,” said the coach despite the fact that the team is classified as second in the group. “We have to show more forcefulness when the rival squeezes us,” he taught.
“In five minutes of panic they have scored two goals for us and they could have scored another two if they had needed it,” said Luis Enrique. Later, his team could not open cracks “against a rival who knew how to close and press.” Japan, in his opinion, has achieved first place in a “deserved” way after beating Germany and Japan. Now, it is Spain’s turn to cross against Morocco. “If we get ahead on the scoreboard, they will squeeze us like Japan has squeezed us. We have to learn to manage these situations », he insisted.
After closing the first half with an advantage (1-0), the Asturian coach warned his players of the Japanese reaction. The Japanese no longer had anything to lose. “We talked about it at halftime, that the second part was not going to be like the first. Japan was going to risk. We are classified thanks to the first two games of this phase », he underlined. He said he was not worried, but acknowledged that the defeat is a “slap in the face to realize that this is a World Cup.” And he warned: “In the playoffs this can happen.”
In his first statements, Luis Enrique preferred to turn the page. «I like to focus on what we have to do. I would have liked to go first. Japan have shot three times on goal. You don’t need to attack a lot if you score the goals,” he said. The questions came back over and over again about those minutes in which Spain was virtually out of the World Cup. “When a team like Japan has nothing to lose, it just so happens that they fly like airplanes. Then it went back to the normal situation. The end was already very difficult, because they were very closed, “he said.
He was also explicit about the play for the second goal: «I have seen a photo that must be fake. Or manipulated. It can’t be that that image is true. I have nothing more to say”. Of the seven games, including the final, to which it aspires to play in Qatar, Spain has already played three and has earned, with suffering, the right to be in the fourth. Morocco will be the rival. The technician, who, like the Stoic philosophers he reads so much, combines courage and temperance, wants more. Until the duel on Tuesday, he has days left to rebuild the self-confidence of his players. From the initial outing against Costa Rica, the anguish against Japan has passed. Spain is still alive. And Luis Enrique wants this latest defeat to toughen his team.
