A Morata goal and then a lot of fear

A shame, because a first half which was fairly good was followed by another which was too bad. The good half helped us to win the match, which is not scant, and we currently sit in second place in the group, which is not a lot. The bad half took away our faith. It gives the feeling that this team left their tremendous security in Brazil, the tremendous security that allowed it to drift in any situation, and now it distrusts itself a little. A couple of mismatches back, which were paradoxically born of excessive confidence, disrupted it all. We were left, like Del Bosque, with a bad taste in the mouth. And that everything had started well.

Spain lined up with Koke and Busquets in the middle, the duo supporting a line of three super players, Silva, Iniesta and Isco, with Morata up top. Jordi Alba incorporated himself a lot on the left, like an arrow. Juanfran did too, on occasion. The play was driven, precise, joyful, fast. Morata moved around well and his team-mates found him. A good pass from Koke was transformed into a goal. He also had another chance, and some of his team-mates did too. Sergio Ramos crashed a header on to the angle of the goal, at a corner. The Ukrainians had threatened with two free-kicks from around the area, just that.

It looked good, it looked good for a 3-0 win. But the second half started with scares which were born, in my view, from the lack of pressure with which the team approached the game near their area. And all of a sudden general insecurity spread itself, and that transformed the good team that we had seen into a bundle of nerves and doubts. A team that didn’t know whether to go for the second or wait. The successive exits of Morata, Iniesta and Jordi Alba, due to fatigue or injury, did not improve it. Details remained, above all with Isco, but we saw much more of Casillas than his Ukrainian counterpart Pyatov. No, it was not a day to leave happy…

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