WORLD CUP USA ’94 ROUND OF 16 : Spain Not Too Friendly : Soccer: Team gets four yellow cards and one big break to rough up Switzerland, 3-0.
You spend three weeks in America, this is what happens.
The Spanish soccer team arrived in Chicago on June 10 as a polite group of underachievers with the killer instinct of a flamenco dancer.
They advanced to the World Cup quarterfinals Saturday as a cocky, thuggish bunch badly in need of a shave.
Switzerland never saw it coming and never stood a chance, falling, 3-0, to Spain in a second-round game before 53,121 at RFK Stadium.
Spain advances to a quarterfinal match Saturday in Foxboro, Mass., against the winner of the second-round game there between Nigeria and Italy.
Not that the Spaniards care who they play.
“If we play like this, I think we can win everything,” defender Jorge Otero said.
Or how they play.
“This is the World Cup, this is not a friendly,” midfielder Jose Maria Bakero said. “We do what we have to do.”
Such as, record more fouls (18) than shots (12).
And receive four yellow cards for bad behavior.
Things were so rough, Spain’s Juan Antonio Goikoetxea and Switzerland’s Yvan Quentin began tugging at each other and nearly started that rarest of World Cup occurrences, the bench-clearing brawl.
And the game was only in the 18th minute.
By the time the Swiss were allowed to collapse at midfield with the final whistle, their white pants were covered with grass stains and their faces with shock.
“We just did not expect this,” Swiss defender Alain Geiger said. “We were not prepared.”
Spain’s victory completed one of the best days in that country’s sports history, which began with Conchita Martinez’s victory over Martina Navratilova for the Wimbledon women’s title and continued with Miguel Indurain’s second place standing in the Tour de France.
But the only way those two events would have compared to the soccer victory is if Martinez had thrown her racket at Navratilova and Indurain had thrown tacks under his opponents’ tires.
“In the end, Switzerland was not just tired physically,” Otero said, “they were tired morally.”
Things were actually even for, oh, 14 minutes.
Then Switzerland’s Stephane Chapuisat dribbled down the left side and into the penalty area and was headed for a goal . . . when Spain’s Miguel Angel Nadal tackled him.
No penalty was called. The Swiss were stunned, and their large group of fans began booing and whistling.
It was all the distraction the Spanish needed.
Next thing anybody knew, Spain’s Fernando Hierro was dribbling through the middle of the Swiss side of the field, faking a pass to Sergi Barjuan, keeping the ball himself, jumping through three tacklers and kicking the ball into the right side of the net from 25 yards.
The goal, in the 15th minute, came exactly eight seconds after the blown penalty call.
As if to rub it in, Barjuan was clearly offside on the play. That was also not called.
“I didn’t notice what happened on their side of the field, because I was busy noticing the obvious offside on the other end,” Switzerland Coach Roy Hodgson said. “That man was clearly offside. The Spanish are not three goals better than us.”
Forced to play without star midfielder Alain Sutter, who did not respond to pregame treatment for a broken toe, the Swiss were clearly lost on the attack.
It didn’t help them that, once down, Spain beat on them even harder. In a five-minute span after the goal, Spanish players were given three yellow cards.
Those four cited players will have to play carefully in the next game to avoid another yellow card and a suspension from a possible semifinal match. Not that the Spaniards were thinking about anything but Switzerland on Saturday.
“Our style today was very effective,” Spain Coach Javier Clemente said. “They could not cope with it.”
Nor could they cope with Spanish goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta, who had one of the best games of the tournament with several diving and one-handed saves.
Fighting recent criticism with sarcasm, Clemente announced, “I hope the journalists in Spain conduct a survey tomorrow to see if, indeed, Zubizarreta is a good goalkeeper or not.”
It was that sort of biting afternoon. By the time the Spanish scored their second goal, in the 74th minute on a 15-foot shot by Luis Enrique Martinez, the Swiss were so beaten they allowed Barjuan to move unmolested through the middle to give the assist.
Spain’s final goal came after a flurry of near misses, when frustrated Swiss goalkeeper Marco Pascolo finally tackled Albert Ferrer in the penalty area. Aitor Beguiristain easily converted the penalty kick.
Even renowned Spanish tenor Placido Domingo was moved.
Standing outside his countrymen’s locker room, the maker of beautiful music shrugged.
“I wish there be no fouls allowed in football but, because there are, you do what you must do,” he said. “After all, this is not a game for little ladies.”
