Spain 2 England 0
Bartra was man of the match.
A smart, athletic centreback who reads the game beautifully, this lad might even become another Franco Baresi, who won 82 caps for Italy. He’s that good.
It was men and boys for the first half hour.
But Raheem Sterling was playing OK early on, as he did in the World Cup.,
Iniesta, knowing he would only play 45, was bubbly in an advanced inside left role and Spain were able to play walking football at times, such was their superiority.
HALF-TIME SCORE WAS 0-0.
Spain had 67% possession.
Adam Lallana was pitiful, losing the ball again and again. We had a few chances but needed to score first to get a draw.
You can’t play Lallana and Ross Barkley together. You need more running power.
When Fabregas found raiding right back Mario, he scored with an acrobatic volley worthy of Denis Law or Marco Van Basten.
Score after 72 minutes : 1-0
When Rooney came on we saw his nous steady England. He can anchor the team from the front because he’s experienced every kind of match, every situation on the way to winning, drawing and losing. Wherever a game is balanced, or unbalanced, Wayne has been there before. You need a couple of guys like that,
Although Rooney is years past his prime, and looks slow, England improved after he came on.
Azpilicueta replaced Bartra in 82, slotting in as a centreback.
Sub Cazorla slotted for 2-0, a sweet left-footed shot that went in off the post.
Sadly, Carrick left the field on a stretcher.
Throughout the game I kept having flashbacks because I started reporting England at Wembley in 1982 and continued through Bobby Robson, Graham Taylor, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan.
Keegan quit on the night the old stadium closed after a 30-yard free-kick by Didi Hamann that David Seaman should have saved. He resigned from a job he should never have been offered.
My time wasn’t all bad: I had a lot of fun with Bobby, especially.
I saw fine players like Viv Anderson and Des Walker come into the team, was there for Hoddle’s debut goal against Bulgaria, and marvelled as the dynamic Gascoigne announcing himself by ripping Czechoslovakia apart just before Italia 90
Yes, yes, of course all that was a long time ago.
But mostly I feel as if I’ve been watching the same England team for 33 years.
Like every other decent opponent, Spain made runs nearer to the ball than we did, had superior craft, better habits and more confidence.
Spain is a producer nation, a country that exports footballers to leagues abroad. Morata, who didn’t come on, plays as a striker for Juventus.
The skills of the Spanish players give them time to see, time to choose. Their feet allow their eyes to see more than our guys can see.
Our guys have been mostly yeomen, apart from Stanley Matthews, Johnny Haynes, Bobby Charlton and Gazza.
For the whole of my lifetime English clubs depended on the artistry and drive of Scottish, Irish and Welsh players. Blanchflower & Mackay, White & Jones, Law and Best, Bremner & Giles, Souness & Dalglish, Rush & Whelan, John Robertson, Archie Gemmill and Kenny Burns.
While Aston Villa was a team of Englishmen who could never have won the European Cup without Des Bremner, Allan Evans and Ken McNaught, three Scots.
My main Wembley memory from 1982 onwards is that every team played more intelligently than us.
That’s why Alicante seemed like more of the same old, same old.
Roy Hodgson is a safe pair of hands who was hired to give us respectable failure.
We went to Brazil for the World Cup in 2014
For the first time ever we didn’t win a game. That’s abject failure, disreputable failure.
Today, 18 months on, we’re preparing for Euro 2016, where the overall quality of the top 12 teams among the 24 qualifiers will probably be higher than it was in the World Cup.
We know we’re not any good and the hacks on Sky’s Sunday Supplement acknowledged that fact.
Although I was a bit surprised to see Matt Lawton admit, “I was just staggered by eleven players walking around with an inferiority complex.”
Having been a reporter for a long time, it’s a job that eats you up and makes you stale. After the first 20 years, it becomes quite monotonous.
Don’t really know Matt but I like the guy and once did Newsnight with him. Along with an MP, we were talking about whether Sven-Goran Eriksson should be sacked.
Bottom line, being England manager is a weird and difficult job.
My long experience tells me that an England manager does something radical every 30 years.
If I get time this week, I’ll explain that.