In contrast, it was a first defeat in 15 games for England, as Roy Hodgson used the friendly as an opportunity to try out different combinations with the likes of Michael Carrick and Fabian Delph starting in midfield.
Advertisement
England were comprehensively outplayed by La Roja in Alicante and Mario Gaspar’s brilliant 72nd-minute volley and a clinical Santi Cazorla effort six minutes from time gave the hosts a comfortable win.
The England manager is concerned that the 34-year-old could have damaged his ankle ligaments and while the extent of the injury has not been determined, Hodgson is not optimistic about the scan or X-Ray the results.
“He is a very combative player but we have combative centre-halves and they will just have to deal with that situation”.
“We all want to play the games and hopefully we can give the manager something to think about in our performances”.
Despite losing, Hodgson also remains confident that his team can only improve between now and next summer, especially since he still has several big name players set to return from injury.
Despite having his back to goal, the Spain right-back managed to beat Joe Hart with a flying volley from Cesc Fabregas’s pass. At moments we did that, but we didn’t profit enough from those moments.
“We were hoping that on a counter-attack we could cause them a few problems. We have to learn a lesson from it, and remember that playing against teams of this quality, you can not afford to make any technical mistakes in wrong areas, as you’ll get punished”.
The speaker was England boss Fabio Capello, and the recipient of his glowing words of praise was an Everton midfielder who had just appeared in an global friendly against Spain.
“We saw at the World Cup that they, like ourselves, didn’t have a good World Cup. Their pressure caused us to lose a bit of composure”.
England’s preparations for Euro 2016 got off to a disappointing start as Spain secured a comfortable 2-0 victory in Alicante.
“I can’t say we deserved to win the game ” they were the better team and deserved to win it”. But we don’t need to do that.
Carrick has previously had surgery on ankle ligaments in June 2014, forcing him to miss out on the first 12 weeks of last season.
Advertisement
“Tomorrow night will be a tough game, Spain are a tough team with a lot of very good players and then we have another tough game against France”. “If I am trying to be forgiving, or kind, to the 11 or 14 [of my players] out there, I thought they worked as hard as they possibly could and I don’t think they let me or my coaching staff down in any way in those terms”.
