Can Spain Make History and Make It a Hat-Trick of Titles at Euro 2016?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 9, 2016

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Spain’s qualifying campaign for Euro 2016 always looked too good to be true.

At first glance, how could you possibly pick apart a record of nine wins from 10 games, which saw Spain score 23 goals and concede only three to qualify for the tournament as the comfortable winners of their group.

It would seem ever so pedantic to cast aspersions. Even so, delve a little deeper, and Spain’s record quickly loses its impressive sheen.

Vicente del Bosque’s side were gifted a relatively straightforward path to France, being placed in a group alongside such continental lightweights as Belarus, Luxembourg and Macedonia.

Even the more challenging nations of Ukraine and Slovakia would not have caused the Spanish much concern, so the defending champions coasted through qualifying.

It should be noted, however, that Spain lost what had always appeared their most difficult fixture: away to Slovakia.

But until Tuesday, the facade had been maintained that all was good in the Spain camp. The bookmakers still have them as one of the favourites to win the tournament in France at 5-1, per Odds Shark.

However, Georgia exposed the surprising brittleness of the Spanish on Tuesday night, when they inflicted the embarrassment of a 1-0 defeat on them in Madrid.



This was Georgia, ranked 137th in the world, who will not be in France this summer and who have not won a game since 2014—and that was against Gibraltar.

There will be a temptation to dismiss the result as a mere blip, just a pre-tournament tune-up with players going through the motions. But the truth is it laid bare some of the problems in the Spain squad.

Can Spain recapture the form and spirit that saw them triumph at Euro 2008 and Euro 2012, with a World Cup thrown in for good measure in 2010, or will they succumb to the same problems as they did in Brazil two years ago, faili...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football

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