Nothing perhaps summed up more acutely the tragedy of Spain’s exit from the World Cup in Brazil than the snapshot of David Villa and Xavi Hernandez , judged by their manager surplus to requirements, on the substitutes bench.
Villa has scored more goals for Spain’s national team than any other in history, while Xavi Hernandez has been the backbone and indeed defined a style of fluid attacking play based on possession and quick passing which few teams have managed to emulate with such success, either club or national level.
Between them Villa and Xavi once personified Spain’s La Roja at its best, effective as well as creative- and yet such was their diminished form that Del Bosque chose, at some risk, not to use them in the critical game against Chile.
Instead Del Bosque gambled on a lone striker- Diego Costa, a player that has not only played no part in La Roja’s days of glory but disrupts its trademark system of play, and whose debut performance, in this World Cup against Holland, after a season marred by injury, was distinctly uninspirational. That other emblem of past La Roja’s glories, Torres, was brought on belatedly, when it was all effectively over.
Against Chile, as against Holland, Spain lacked creativity, passion, and capacity to score goals: no sense of self-worth, no team ethos, with its vulnerability increasingly exposed as they game progressed.
It is not the first national team in history to crash to the ground from its celestial heights. Football champions end with a bang as well as whimper and the end of Spain’s defence of its World Cup was, depending on different perspectives and loyalties, both anti-climactic and dramatic.
Other countries like Holland and Brazil can claim to have created some of the best football of the post-war era but struggled to keep up the momentum (these national teams playing in this World Cup may not be losing games, but they are so far a pale shadow of Brilliant Orange and the Jogo Bonito).
End of football eras, and I am cautious about using this phrase in Spain’s case, whether at national or club level share some common themes. Team lose their hunger after too much success. Some players age or lose form quicker than others. Transitions from one generation to the next can be mismanaged. Inspirational managers and players find their legacy diminished with the passage of time.
Del Bosque told me in the run up to the World Cup that the main challenge he faced was in motivating his players while adding that he still believed in football being played with style and grace not as a simply means to an end. I got a sense that having got to the top La Roja might fight it difficult to find a new horizon, that Del Bosque was playing down expectations of new conquests because his faith had diminished, not least because things had happened at club level that conspired against a good performance.
His choice of Costa defies all La Roja logic, and Del Bosque never explained it to me . I suspect that that part of the reason was that the Spanish football authorities felt they deserved to give Atletico de Madrid’s star player a key role in the national team after the huge fuss generated over this Brazilian becoming a Spanish citizen in order to play for Spain.
Alomng with Costa, the main crop of Spanish players were drawn from three clubs- Real Madrid FC Barcelona, and Atletico de Madrid that had gone through a physically and emotionally challenging season at both national and international level. Costa had only just recovered from an injury.There was a real problem with Barca’s own sense of collective identity post-Guardiola, and Casillas’s self-esteem still carried the scars from the Mourinho era, when he was dropped at Real Madrid.
Nevertheless Del Bosque picked the side he thought had the mental as well as physical resolve to at least progress to the final stages of the World Cup in Brazil. He rated Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Croatia, and Germany as the main teams to beat. But for Iniesta, proven star Spanish international players – led by captain Casillas-but including the likes of Ramos, Jordi Alba, Alonso, and Busquets, played badly, and new in-takes like Costa and Azpilicueta simply added to the misery. Even Pedro, brought in at the start of the Chile game to revive the team, failed. Not only did the team not hold together in any effective cohesive system- but it was hugely deficient in goal scoring ability.
That Spain failed to come out against Holland and play like champions and then, when then they were up against it, failed to react against Chile , is partly down to the players. But Del Bosque picked them, and in the end was unable to lift them, so he must assume a large measure of responsibility for Spain’s collective failure in this World Cup.
It is a failure that fills me not with anger, but with profound sadness for Del Bosque, a manager of such proven human decency, exemplary political conduct, and love and respect for the best in the game that he did not deserve such humiliation in the Maracana, where his team played most of the match being booed by a majority of Chilean and Brazilian fans.
La Roja’s ultimate humiliators, Chile, were made up of a team of young, tough, courageous warriors with a manager that cheered and instructed them every step of the way. The Chileans had the spirit of their ancestors, the Araucanians, (the heroic Indian tribe that fiercely resisted the complacent Spanish conquistadores), even if their brilliant goalkeeper is descended from Spaniards and plays for a Spanish club (on transfer from Real Sociedad to FC Barcelona,).
As a pack, the Chileans played uncompromising , youthful and effective football, at full throttle with a manager accompanying them all along the way, to score goals, to hold the defence, to pressure and mark -quite the opposite of Spain’s dysfunctional, dispirited game of past heroes and failed arrivistes, and poor Del Bosque who looked and acted as if he had run out of ideas and faith.
I mourn the end of an era that produced football at its most creative and humanly appealing and which gave me many hours of joy since La Roja began to show its true brilliance in the run up to Euro 2008. I expect Del Bosque to quit honourably and honoured or stay on for a transition period while a decent replacement is found. Spain and world football owes him a huge vote of thanks. He will be a very tough act to follow.
I hope and trust that it won’t be long before Spain finds its compass again, under a new manager and with new emerging generations of highly talented players capable of recreating the solidarity as a team, the poetry of style, and nobility in success that made Del Bosque’s La Roja so very special.
I believe that my journey through Spanish football is far from over. The national team will evolve in shape and style. The success of Spain’s youth teams, the strength in depth of its major clubs, and the valuable experience of a plethora of gifted Spanish players playing in the most competitive national leagues in the world , suggests that the future is worth looking forward to.
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