Relief and expectation were the two predominant collective emotions in Spain on Saturday, after Friday’s 2-1 World Cup defeat of Chile.
The tight win in Pretoria meant that Spain finished top of Group H and will face neighbours Portugal in the round of 16 on Tuesday.
Around 15 million Spaniards watched the match, many of them at outdoor World Cup street parties.
The first half was greeted with delight across Spain, as goals from David Villa and Andres Iniesta gave La Furia Roja the lead.
The second half was more cagey and tense. Rodrigo Millar pulled a goal back for Chile, then both teams seemed to settle for a 2-1 scoreline — a scoreline which also sent Chile through because of the impotency of the Swiss, who could only draw their game with Honduras 0-0.
The biggest World Cup party in Spain, outside Real Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, was hit by a potent summer storm. The fans went home drenched but relieved, looking forward to returning on Tuesday.
The Pretoria win was front-page news in every Spanish paper on Saturday.
Barcelona paper La Vanguardia praised Iniesta for his “majestic” performance and expressed the hope that the little Barca playmaker “has finally recovered from his muscle problems.”
Catalan daily Sport was quick to point out that both of Spain’s goals were scored by Barca players, Iniesta and Villa.
According to Sport, Villa has scored “two of the best goals in the tournament”, against Chile and Honduras.
Mundo Deportivo, for its part, was proud that Villa is now the tournament’s joint top scorer, on three goals, with Gonzalo Higuain of Argentina and Slovakia’s Robert Vittek. Villa is also now Spain’s all-time World Cup top marksman with six goals, three of them scored in 2006.
There were no less than six Barca players in Vicente del Bosque’s starting lineup. In addition, Sport was confident on Saturday that Cesc Fabregas, who came off the bench in the second half, will soon be joining Barca from Arsenal.
But papers also remained critical of the Spanish performance, comparing it to the slick, flowing football that took La Roja to triumph two years ago at Euro 2008.
Madrid daily Publico commented that “there is still a long way to go to recapture the passing game of 2008...Last night’s match was rough and disjointed. Fortunately, Spain scored just when Chile was threatening to take control.” Marca, for its part, quoted Luis Aragones, the man who led La Roja to glory at Euro 2008, as saying that “Spain has improved, but not by enough. I hope that the team has a better physical condition in the next match.” Aragones pointed out that Del Bosque’s team “has looked physically flat” in the second half of all three of its Group H matches.
