The Spanish newspapers launched a sharp attack on the coach of the national team, Luis Enrique, and his players, after the exit from the round of 16 of the World Cup Qatar 2022, at the hands of the Moroccan national team with a penalty shootout (3-0) after the end of the match in the regular and extra time on the result of a tie (0-0).
Before facing the two teams, the hopes of the football community in Spain were high in coach Luis Enrique and his young squad that reached the semi-finals of the European Championship 2021 and the final of the European Nations League for the same year, and the strong start of the colleagues of the promising star, Gavi, the best young player in the world for the year 2022, by sweeping Costa Rica 7-0 at the opening of Group E competitions, prompted the Spaniards to be optimistic about achieving remarkable results in Qatar.
However, the team that was crowned world champion in 2010 and European 2012 came out with a lackluster draw with Germany (1-1), before the La Roja players’ confidence in themselves was shaken after the loss from Japan (2-1), which put them out of the tournament for a few minutes in the last round in the group stage.
Many believed that Spain was content with losing to Japan to avoid a possible confrontation with Brazil in the quarter-finals, but it paid the price against Morocco after a mediocre performance and wasting all the penalties against goalkeeper Yassine Bounou.
Humble Spain
And the newspaper “Marca” wrote in its headline, “Failure to humble Spain,” and added in analyzing the match, “Luis Enrique frustrated even his team. The whole campaign was disappointing, except for the Costa Rica match. The team was in free fall until it collapsed completely in front of Morocco.”
The newspaper expressed its mockery of Enrique regarding his statements before facing Morocco, when he said that “every player trained to take 1,000 penalty kicks in anticipation of the end of the match in a draw and passing to penalty kicks,” but his team did not succeed in scoring any penalty kick, as Bono saved two kicks from Carlos Soler. And Sergio Busquets, while Pablo Sarabia hit the post before them.
And Marca continued, sarcastically, “The team was supposed to train on 26,000 penalty kicks, as Luis Enrique said.”
In its evaluation of the players’ performance, the newspaper said, “There is no player in the team capable of making a difference.”
Enrique’s fate is in doubt
As for the newspaper “SPORT”, one of its articles was headlined “Spain leaves with a big zero”, and continued, “Spain drowned…the team of a thousand passes and a thousand penalties.”
The newspaper “AS” (AS), for its part, expressed the general feeling in football circles in Spain, in its headline, saying, “What a painful World Cup,” while journalist Thomas Roncero indicated that Spain exited early from the World Cup, as happened in Russia 4 years ago for the same reasons, adding, “Enrique possessed the ball without danger. Morocco felt comfortable with this method. He needed to take risks and make bolder individual decisions and play vertically, not just horizontally. Passion for controlling the ball cannot be satisfied.”
He continued, “The exit from the round of 16 is a failure and the matter cannot be mitigated. Luis Enrique will leave and we do not know the fate of the national team.”
It is noteworthy that Luis Enrique confirmed in the press conference after the loss that he feels completely satisfied with the La Roja national team, while his future has not been decided yet, and indicated that he will meet with the President of the Spanish Federation, Luis Rubiales, next week to discuss that.