Only 10 of the 27 central defenders under contract at the teams currently occupying the top seven places in Primera División are eligible to play for Spain. Of those, three haven't played a single minute this season (José Antonio Dorado (Valenci), David Costas (Celta) and Alejandro Arribas (Sevilla)); Nacho, of Real Madrid, has just a single season under his belt and is a fringe player for his club; Gerard Piqué and Marc Bartra are warming the bench at Barcelona and Sergi Gómez and Víctor Ruiz are doing likewise at Celta and Villarreal.
Only two of the 10 are starters at the moment: Sergio Ramos and Celta's Andreu Fontás, who didn't get a call-up despite playing twice as a much football as Piqué this season.
Of the 27 central defenders at the clubs currently in the European positions, 17 are foreign and in or around the starting line-ups with their clubs. Spain suffered a left-back crisis a while ago, when Joan Capdevila retired and before the emergence of Jordi Alba. Now the shortage is in the heart of the back four. Spain manager Vicente del Bosque stated his belief that the solution to the current crisis would be the same as the pervious one: generational. "The truth is that there are a lot of foreign central defenders in La Liga. We do have a bit of a deficit in that area. But the same thing happened with left backs and now we have seven or eight to choose from."
There is time for the new batch of centre halves to emerge. Two years. That is length of time until Euro 2016 and the period Del Bosque has identified to complete his reconstruction of La Roja.
from Últimas noticias | Diario AS http://ift.tt/1sTH8Ef
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