The Spanish national team repeated the lost – Newspaper Kommersant No. 227 (7428) of 07.12.2022

The Spanish national team, which after the group stage looked like one of the main favorites of the Qatari World Cup, flew out in the starting round of the play-offs for the second consecutive world championship. The feat of the Russian team four years ago was repeated by the same disciplined and strong Moroccans, like her, who defeated the Spaniards who suddenly lost all their best qualities and did not score a single goal in the penalty shootout in two hours of play.

This incident, it seemed, could not be repeated, but it did. In 2018, the Spanish national team, which went to the World Cup in Russia in the status of an unconditional contender for medals, an unconditional football giant, lost already in the 1/8 finals to the hosts of the tournament with their most modest background. But the current misfire is even more painful. Four years ago, the defeat of the Spaniards, who, before the championship, lost their coach Julen Lopetegui, who quarreled with the national federation, who believed too much in the magic of their long-awaited style, was still not perceived as a bolt from the blue: they were preparing for something like that. The Qatari defeat was just such a thunder, because at the group stage the Spanish team, which forgot about the conflicts, was at least insanely good for segments, so good that it just wanted to hand over the medals in advance, and the opponents who were quoted at the start of the championship were opposed at all no higher than in 2018 the Russians. But the bomb hit the remaining unburied crater.

Even if a person who found himself in the stands of the Education City stadium that evening had his eyes closed with a thick black bandage, he would easily have guessed what was happening on the field by ear. Of course, if I had determined in advance that the overwhelming majority of Moroccan fans were at the match, and I would also remember how the audience, alien to the Spanish national team, used to react to its shuffling, which can last for several minutes – well, yes, whistling. So, at some point, the whistle of thousands of Moroccan fans became literally unbearable. Europeans admitted that it just hurts their ears.

And by the way, he didn’t really say anything good about the Spanish game. After all, endless and tedious shuffles seemed to have remained in a rather distant past – in those days when the Spanish team worshiped the tiki-taka invented by it, which brought many prizes, but in the end seemed to have become obsolete. At the group stage of this championship, the new Spanish team played, which, of course, knows how to hold the ball, but does not make such an ability an end in itself – a fresh, sharp team of Spain, which is constantly striving forward.

And then she seemed to come back, resurrecting her old habits. And about how they were suitable for the match with the Moroccan team, which confidently marched in the playoffs from a difficult group with strong defense (Croats, Belgians and Canadians were able to inflict only two dozen blows on its goal in three matches), they also talked well numbers and feelings.

In the starting quarter of an hour, the Spaniards made 155 passes – three times more than the rivals – and possessed the ball for three-quarters of the time. And the ratio did not decrease, but, on the contrary, grew. But in order to understand how much benefit the Spanish team brought from its formal control, it was worth looking at the map showing which zones the game was played more often in. So, 76% of the events took place in the area of ​​the central circle and only a little more than ten – inside the Moroccan penalty area. So rarely even Canadians have visited it.

And the sensations screamed that the sharpness in the actions of the Spaniards was approximately the same as in the actions of the Moroccans. In fact, the only reason to think that the goal is close, for the Spanish fans trying to break through the Moroccan whistle, came when the Moroccan goalkeeper Yassin Bounou saved Gavi’s shot on the crossbar: however, the goal would still not have been counted due to offside recorded a second earlier. The Moroccan national team, maybe not one hundred percent, but not bad, had a lot of moments, and almost all of them were born from the losses of Spanish football players imprisoned for attack, who, in the schemes of coach Luis Enrique, are forced to either more or less constantly, or sometimes engage in defensive work, – Ferran Torres , Marcos Llorente. After the loss, Nasser Mazraoui fired unpleasantly for Unay Simona from a distance: the goalkeeper released the ball from his hands, but somehow took it away, not allowing the opponents to have time for the rebound. A rally grew out of the loss, which led to a cool, but slightly inaccurate header by Naif Agerd.

It all reminded me of something. Summer 2018. Full Luzhniki at the 1/8 final match of the previous World Cup. The Spanish national team plays just as academically against the Russian team, which seems to be easy prey, and runs into problems that throw it out of the tournament, and with it throw out the obsolete tiki-taka to the dump.

Historical analogies in the second half did not lose their relevance, rather the opposite. In Spanish football, all such clear, convex personal talents, personal highlights of Pedri, Gavi, Ferran Torres, Dani Olmo were dissolved without a trace, like ice in a bucket of boiling water. They somehow turned into the same parts, on the one hand, powerful, and on the other, an insanely boring mechanism that lacked unpredictability, a spark that spun and spun tirelessly, but did not produce anything worthwhile.

But the personal Moroccan talents shone with a flame. Let Hakim Ziyech had terribly few opportunities to demonstrate his dispatching skills in this match, but, for example, Ashraf Hakimi admired the intelligence of jerks in all possible directions, and Sofyan Amrabat turned out to be a monster of rough plowing, managing to “clean” almost the entire Moroccan half fields.

Luis Enrique, of course, understood that something and someone in this game needed to be changed. But, say, the appearance of Alvaro Morata at the forefront of the Spanish attack instead of Marco Asensio, who, by the time he had to sit on the bench, had touched the ball only 20 times (and he touched it mainly outside the penalty area), led to nothing. The Moroccan national team continued to hold on – not to survive, but to hold on convincingly, not forgetting to bite counterattacks from time to time. It looked, perhaps, even stronger than in 2018, although not broken, but still decently bent Russian team, saved primarily by patience.

The Moroccans got to overtime not on patience, but on a class that was enough to complicate life to the limit for such a variant of the Spanish national team, and already in overtime they almost led. It was another Moroccan ambush. Azzedine Unai rolled the ball subtly at Walid Shedira, who suddenly found that he could safely shoot Unai Simon. The Spanish goalkeeper rescued by kicking the ball.

And at the end of extra time, it was the turn of the fans of the Spanish national team to sigh bitterly. On the flag, in the finishing cells, she got as many chances as in those two-odd hours that the match lasted before. Everyone was screwed up, including the chance of Pablo Sarabia, who had just been thrown into battle as if specially for him, who hit from the summer from three meters, but, aiming into the far corner, landed in the far rack. But who was lucky to reach the penalty shootout – it was still a debatable issue.

And in her came out that uncertainty that almost always destroys those who are aware of their helplessness in front of someone else’s courage, someone else’s calculation of favorites. The Spaniards performed penalty kicks disgustingly. The first Sarabia, who will be cursed by the whole country, launched into the bar, the next two – Carlos Soler and Sergio Busquets – overflowing with confidence Yassin Bunu reflected. In 2018, Igor Akinfeev finished off the Spaniards this way. And who would have guessed that history would repeat itself?

In the quarter-finals, Morocco, who made it this far in the World Cup for the first time, will play the winner of the late-night match between the Portuguese and the Swiss.

Alexey Dospekhov