Spain 0 Cape Verde 0
A historic day for Cape Verde. I think it’s probably safe to say that this might be the greatest result in the history of Cape Verde football and you can’t say they didn’t deserve the point today, I didn’t expect a similar result to the Germany-Curacao game but the least I expected was a 2 or 3 nil win from Spain but from the start you could sense the ambition from this Cape Verde side. Ferran Torres had the best chance of the first half as Cucurella headed the ball back across the box to the Barcelona man who lifted his volley onto the crossbar to keep the game at 0-0, you’d expect the Spanish to come flying out for the second half but up until Lamine Yamal came on in the 71st minute Spain looked like they could play all night and not score. Yamal injected some life into the attack but not enough for Spain to get the ball past Vozinha in the Cape Verde goal who had the game of his life, then in the dying minutes of added time Cape Verde won a corner to steal all three points with Joao Paulo having a free header but could only hit it straight at Unai Simon. You can only imagine the scenes if he found the net, what a night for the entire country of Cape Verde.
A defensive masterclass from Cape Verde. Obviously it takes some luck to keep Spain goalless for 90 minutes but I was so impressed with Cape Verde today at the back, their 40 year old goalkeeper Vozinha made 7 saves on the night winning player-of-the-match but that whole backline was sensational making block after block to the Spanish onslaught in that second half. The only slight remark you could have for that Cape Verde performance is that they actually had a few half-chances to hurt Spain on the counter but they got a bit overexcited with the final pass which stopped them creating any clear-cut chances on the night, you have to imagine this will give them real confidence going into the Saudi Arabia and Uruguay matches that a win against either would sensationally take them into the next round. You wouldn’t have predicted that before the tournament.
An embarrassing night for Spanish football. I’ve got to admit I was a bit let down to see the frontline De la Fuente picked tonight of Gavi-Oyarzabal-Torres and all three of them today were absolutely shocking, it was giving me reminders of the Spain team back in the 2022 World Cup which had no attack and limped out to Morocco on penalties which could easily happen again if Yamal and Nico Williams don’t come back into the team fully fit. Barca fans will tell you that when Ferran Torres plays on the wing he’s almost unwatchable and he had a stinker today out on that right-hand-side missing a sitter which could have put Spain 1-0 up in the first half, Mikel Oyarzabal has delivered for Spain in the last few years but you wouldn’t put your hat on him to be the main man in your attack and we saw that tonight. Some really poor misses particularly with headers for some reason that maybe Alvaro Morata would have done better with, could Spain be missing him this tournament? Gavi isn’t an attacker so shoving him on the left-wing obviously didn’t work where he was ineffective all game. Even the midfield bar Pedri was off today with Fabian Ruiz continuing to look nowhere near the player he was 2 years ago, Rodri as well was terrible taking far too long on the ball in midfield which about summed Spain up today. Obviously it’s not the end of the world but Spain will have to improve quick if they want to win this tournament.
I’m loving the new format so far. There was complaints from people before the tournament that a 48 team World Cup would see the likes of Cape Verde, Qatar etc all get hammered by the big nations but other than the Curacao game we’ve see the so called ‘smaller’ nations being competitive when they’ve played so far. To see a country like Cape Verde hold Spain to a draw on the World’s stage was amazing and I hope we continue to see upsets from the smaller nations the further the tournament goes on, my one gripe with the format though is that with so many 3rd place teams going through we are going to see teams settling for draws because they only need one win to progress most likely. I’m not sure what FIFA can do about this but there’s no jeopardy in the group stages anymore which I think is a shame.
Will this result have any impact on Spain’s group stage? Maybe in the past Spain would be panicking right now but they find themselves in a pretty easy group so I think they’ll still finish in 1st place when Yamal and Nico Williams come back into the team, Saudi Arabia vs Uruguay is on later so we’ll get a look at those two but I don’t think either will be pulling up too many trees in this tournament. Are you worried about Spain this tournament after that performance? I would be.