Del Bosque: Spain believe in Diego Costa

Spain’s friendlies against England and Belgium will be a chance for La Roja to demonstrate their quality before they defend their European title in France next year, new call-up Oscar de Marcos said.

Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque felt England played reasonably well.

The quotes above come from a fairly lengthy and interesting interview – not a word you often associate with Del Bosque, “interesting” – in which the legendary Real Madrid player and later coach, who has won pretty much everything one could possibly win in the game of football, delves into a few of the new trends seen in tactics, footballing identities (“tiki-taka”, “English-style football”), and the ever-present “problem” of teams becoming a collection of all-star players from around the world rather than a group of local or somewhat-local lads fighting for an innate goal of local pride (or whatever ideals we associate with those wonderful days of yore).

The result put an end to England’s 15-game unbeaten streak, which dated back to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The game brought a 100th clean sheet for long serving goalkeeper Iker Casillas, who has been on the winning side on 120 times in his 165 caps. “It is important for us to have a player at this level, with a fantastic career”.

To make things worse for Del Bosque, midfielder Thiago Alcantara had to be substituted by Cazorla because of a knee injury in the 25th, while Hodgson lost midfielder Michael Carrick in injury time. “He thrives on that and that gets his team-mates going as well”, Rooney was cited by the British media on Friday.

Spain eventually broke the deadlock in the 72nd minute as Mario Gaspar collected a pass from Cesc Fabregas, before rifling the ball into the top corner.

“He is a very combative player, but we have combative centre-halves and they will just have to deal with that situation”.

“Chelsea are not playing well at all this year and all parts of the team are being criticised”, Del Bosque said on Thursday.

“This is a good win for Spain”.

“We defended well and were strong against a team who were, once again, were very strong and very threatening”.