Olympic Soccer Scores: What Spain’s Elimination Means for Rest of Tournament

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: July 31, 2012

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Spain entered the 2012 London Olympics as one of the teams to beat in the men's football competition, but after successive losses in their opening two matches to Japan and Honduras respectively, they will be eliminated from the competition.

The result is one that simply nobody predicted.

Spain's squad—packed full of talent and boasting some of the players that won the recent 2012 European Championships—were expected to qualify with relative ease and challenge for at least a medal, if not the gold medal.

Sadly, they will not get the chance to do so.

They were beaten by Japan in the opening round by a score of 1-0—a scoreline that perhaps hid the real truth about Spain on two fronts.

Firstly, Japan's poor finishing and David de Gea's fantastic goalkeeping meant that the scoreline didn't read the three or four goal drubbing that Spain probably deserved. Secondly, Spain played the entire second half with just 10 men, after having a player sent off just before halftime.

Thus we were unable to properly gauge how this Spanish national team were performing—their poor showing was hidden from us to some extent.

However, nothing was hidden as Spain wasted several opportunities before conceding that fatal goal against Honduras—the goal that would ensure they finished in the group stages of the competition.



They will look back on the tournament and wonder what could have been—most likely still in shock about their early exit from the tournament and the fact that, despite the load of talent they had, they were unable to score a single goal before elimination.

Their loss, however, has several implications for the remainder of the tournament—the first of which being Brazil are now the undisputed favorites.

Many would have considered the South American giants to be the gold medal favorites before the tournament anyway, bu...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football

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