Spain landed this Wednesday around 4:30 p.m. at the Barajas airport
With almost no time to digest a new bump in a World Cup, and there are already three in a row, Luis Enrique’s La Roja returned to Spain this Wednesday on a flight with suitcases loaded with disappointment, tinged with failure. The team left at eleven o’clock in Doha – two less here – and landed around 4:30 p.m. in Madrid after the elimination on penalties by a Morocco that knew how to play its tricks perfectly against a flat team, without plan B and that had possession but did not know how to do danger due to the slowness of movement, the limited ability to surprise an opponent who, without being anything special, played his tricks perfectly.
Only 14 of the 26 footballers mentioned by Luis Enrique have traveled on that plane: Unai Simón, Nico Williams, Dani Olmo, Sarabia, Balde, Laporte, Gavi, Busquets, Pau Torres, Ferran, Yéremy Pino, Pedri, Ansu Fati and David Raya . The rest, a priori, have preferred to stay in that area to spend a few days off. The employees of the University of Qatar, the concentration center of La Roja, have fired them with national team pennants.
With serious faces, and Luis Rubiales leading the expedition, shattered Spain returns home much sooner than expected, long before Christmas, and it does so with the bitter taste of an opportunity lost due to the incapacity of Luis Enrique and his body. technique to adapt to what the opponent proposes. It is very good to have a basic idea, a catechism with which to go to war, but sometimes you have to change your strategy in the middle of the battle because the opponent has detected a leak, or has armored himself and it is impossible to find a loophole to beat him. And that has happened to Spain in Qatar. That he has never known how to change his mind. Against Japan, for example, when the score went against, there was no longer any striker on the field since the Spaniard had removed Morata from the pitch. It was looking at the bench and not finding a ‘nine’ to try to break the dense Japanese defense. That is one of the ‘sins’ of the coach: making a list with many wingers, but only one pure striker, with Borja Iglesias, the top Spanish scorer in the League, at home.
Spain stepped foot in Madrid again this afternoon after facing Costa Rica everything was honey and roses. But against Germany there were already signs that the defeat of the Central Americans was a mirage. Japan confirmed it and Morocco finished it off, a team ranked 22nd in the FIFA ranking, fifteen positions below a Red that has once again fallen by the wayside.
