Originally posted by Angry Boy
I have to agree. They have underacheived in the past, but the I think the crop of players coming through now (Torres, Fabregas, Villa, Reina etc) are as good as any country in the world. Add those to the more established Raul, Joaquin, Casillas, Reyes, Puyol, Salgado, Xavi etc
If they can get a decent coach to gel them all together, then they could ver ...[text shortened]... in the Euros. Given another 2 years, winning the World Cup may not be out of the question either
i probably missed the point at that raul and reyes got established...
aragones made raul stop captaining the team and i can't remember the last game reyes has played since right from the beginning!
sure, spain has a lot of classy players, but they can't play together. it's like all the spanish players don't fit together. the players alone have a lot of skills, but more to connect them in club teams. like xabi alonso for example. he plays awful in the spanish teams but i couldn't tell you many players that knows how to play the last pass better than alonso outta the players from the premier league....there's the difference. a bt similiar to the problem brazil has currently...spain has good players, but they always had and they always passed out quite early in tournements and also this time they'll not make it, because spain is just not the kinda team that succeeds in tournements. compare them for example with germany: germany has never played the most attractive and was never really the best team, except may be in 70s, but they know how to push themselves to their limits and even to above their limits. germany is a 100 precent tournement team. they know how to get thorugh the knock-out stage to the final like no other. not important whether it's the world cup or the euros. feel free to check the records and you see there's no other team that could reach for the final more often than germany. take holland for another example. the world's best football players came always from holland: gullit, cryuff, neeskens, krol, rijkaardt, de boer are just a few of them, but except the euros in 1988 in germany, they weren't be able to succeed in a tournement just for once...sometimes they couldn'T even qualify or survive the first round, although they had such great players....england has the same problem, although i'd say they was never a time in that england had a team where they had a world class player for every position....all in all, the reasons i gave you are the reasons why germany is so successfull in tournement and is why germany is gonna make for the fourth time!