The rise of Spanish football

Two/three years ago, English club football on the top European stage was at its peak in recent years. With three out of the four semi-final spots in the Champions League taken up by English opposition in the 07/08 and 08/09 seasons, things were looking good. The 09/10 season though did not reap such results, with not one English team present in the semi-final, providing a true shock to most. The international stage on the other hand presented a failure to qualify for Euro 2008 and the ultimately dismal display at the recent World Cup.

While the English stayed stuck in their ways of rigidity and reluctance to change, Spain went through what seemed like a bedding-in period. Barcelona with the instant success of Pep Guardiola was on the brink of bringing through a new generation of players to replace the old legs and unwanted stars. The maturity of Guardiola to get rid of the likes of Ronaldinho and Deco was admirable despite being risky, with Henry being confined to the bench for large parts of last season.  This has given way for players such as Busquets, Pedro and Bojan to gain value first team experience while getting their chance to prove they deserve a place in the squad. Faith has been put into these youngsters and rewards are apparent not just at club level but on the international stage as well.

Seeing as Manchester United are in about a billion of debt, Liverpool struggling to pay back what is owed and Abramovich not as willing to splash the cash at Chelsea, the money seems to be in Spain at the moment. Messi, C. Ronaldo and Kaka; who many have called the three best players in the world over the last two or so years are now all playing in La Liga. It now seems to be more of an attraction to play there seeing as C. Ronaldo could have stayed at Manchester United if he wanted to and Kaka rejecting Manchester City. At the moment, Fabregas is constantly being lured across the water and a move at some point in the near future looks inevitable.

The two giants of Barcelona and Real Madrid look to be bringing the nation forward. Barcelona has been an ever-present force but Madrid has not yet been able to find their way. Odds on though is that the fortunes of the main club in the capital are going to turn under the direction of the commanding Jose Mourinho. In him, Madrid has a manager who will strive to get the best out of the players and play football towards success.

Spain’s national team has been playing what is at times mouth watering football at a very consistent level for over two years. On their day, they are unbeatable and leave many supposedly tough opposition chasing shadows around the pitch with a blend of initiative and pure technique to name two attributes. Adding a European Championship and a World Cup along with this creates a difficult way to find an issue in the team. Though the question must be asked whether enough of La Liga teams are contributing to the national team’s quality. Throughout much of the tournament, the first eleven consisted of nine players from Barcelona and Real Madrid. The other two were Capdevila at Villareal and Torres at Liverpool. This used to cause many problems amongst earlier incarnations of the national team with the rivalling players so used to being on opposite sides of the pitch during “El Clasico” and not being able to handle playing together. Now that they have seemingly gelled, will this issue ever re-occur? As long as the right coach is in the job, probably not but it could only take one training ground bust up to turn things upside down. At the moment, as far as Spain is concerned, the famous phrase, what ain’t broke, don’t fix remains.

A big part of this recent success has to come from the sheer injection of money pumped in over the years to improve the volume of coaching in the country. Now with around 20,000 Spanish coaches (compared to England’s mere 2,000) patterns are emerging. Quality is being replaced with quality on the pitch as a mix of experience and inspirational youth take to the field all with a similar mind-set and approach of play. The Spanish U19 squad at the current Euro have cruised into tomorrow’s semi-final winning all their group games which included beating Portugal and a sound 3-0 victory over Italy; the future looks bright already.