Spain reaches final four for first time since 1950
For decades Spain has approached the World Cup the same way most high school freshmen approach algebra. They’ll go ahead and give it a try, but they don’t expect great results.
In the last 60 years, Spain has gone to the tournament 10 times. And seven times they came home after the first or second round. Once they entered as the reigning European champions yet managed to win only one game.
FOR THE RECORD:
World Cup: An article in the July 4 sports section about Spain’s defeat of Paraguay said that Spain had been in 10 World Cups since 1950. In fact, Spain has been in the tournament 12 times during that period. —
But all that history is, well, just history now. Because after Saturday’s hard-fought 1-0 win over stubborn Paraguay, Spain has advanced to the World Cup’s final four for the first time since 1950, when the tournament had just 16 teams.
“This represents a great moment for Spanish football,” Spanish Coach Vicente del Bosque said.
Probably the best moment because the Spanish are once again European champions. For most of the last two years, they’ve been ranked No. 1 in the world and they won all 10 of their matches in World Cup qualifying, part of a 35-match unbeaten streak that stretched over nearly three years.
And now, thanks to David Villa’s foot and a soft goalpost, Spain is just a win away from the World Cup final. Of course it will take a win over Germany to get there, but we’ll get back to that in a bit. Let the Spaniards celebrate first.
“To be among the four best teams in the world is something really special,” said midfielder Andres Iniesta.
Especially when you consider Spain really hasn’t played a good game since it got here, losing to Switzerland in group play before beating Honduras and Chile, then barely slipping by Portugal and Paraguay by identical 1-0 scores in the elimination rounds.
But Saturday the problem wasn’t Spain, Del Bosque said. It was Paraguay.
“They made us very uncomfortable,” he said. “That’s to their credit.”
Paraguay, after all, was making history too, although it took a strange route to get there. Appearing in the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time ever, Paraguay arrived undefeated despite having gone nearly 2½ games without a goal. Then again it hadn’t given up a goal since its first game in group play three weeks ago — and both streaks nearly came to an end in a three-minute span early in the second half when both teams wound up taking penalty kicks.
Paraguay went first after Spain’s Gerard Pique grabbed the arm of Oscar Cardozo with both hands, pulling him to the ground in the penalty area. After an especially long pause to gather himself, Cardozo approached the ball tentatively and wound up being foiled when Spanish keeper Iker Casillas guessed correctly, diving to his left and right into the path of the shot.
Spain immediately pushed the ball up the field and got its own chance at a penalty kick — two chances actually — after Paraguay’s Antolin Alcaraz knocked Villa down from behind near the goal. Xabi Alonso took the shot for Spain, nailing the back of the net on his first try. But a teammate had moved into the box too early and Guatemalan referee Carlos Batres waved off the goal, sending the Real Madrid midfielder back to the mark to try again.
This time Paraguayan keeper Justo Villar made the diving save, extending his scoreless-minutes streak to 386 in the World Cup.
That streak would end a short time later, when Villa found a friendly goalpost with just seven minutes left in the regulation time. Iniesta set up the score by weaving through a tiring Paraguayan defense before feeding Pedro, who had entered the game just eight minutes earlier. Pedro’s shot struck the left upright and rebounded straight to Villa, whose own shot hit the right post and ricocheted across the goal line.
“The post wanted it to go in,” Villa told reporters.
The score gave Villa the World Cup lead with five goals in as many matches while giving Spain its elusive spot in the semifinals. Sometimes it’s wise to be careful what you wish for, though, because now that Spain has made it this far they must play powerful Germany, a team that dismantled England and Argentina by a combined score of 8-1 in its last two matches.
The game will be a rematch of the 2008 European final, where Spain beat Germany, 1-0.
“The Germans have played a brilliant World Cup so far,” Iniesta said.
The same could be said of Paraguay, whose coach, Gerardo Martino, was disappointed at having finally lost but energized by what his players accomplished.
“We’ve played with all our heart. We played Spain, a team that has been No. 1 for a couple of years, on an equal footing,” he said. “We’re very proud of how we have represented Paraguay.”
