Spain rattled but still on a roll

SPAIN 1 PARAGUAY 0:WITH A couple of the pre-tournament favourites having crashed out of the competition during the previous 36 hours, the organisers of this World Cup will have been mightily relieved to see the European champions make it safely through to the last four.

Still, it was hard not feel for a Paraguayan side who made life much more difficult that expected for the favourites.

In the end, their fate was decided by a couple of big refereeing decision and the penalty that Oscar Cardozo had saved well by Iker Casillas just over a half hour from time. The striker’s effort wasn’t by a long way the worst we’ve seen here in South Africa from the spot but then it wasn’t the best either and once the goalkeeper guessed correctly the striker was in trouble.

The team’s Argentine coach, Gerardo Martino, chose to lay a good portion of the blame for his side’s exit at the feet of the Guatemalan match official, pointing, in particular, at the close-range goal Nelson Valdez had disallowed four minutes before the interval.

“We feel fine because Fifa will apologise tomorrow and everything will be all right,” Martino said afterwards, referring with obvious sarcasm to Sepp Blatter’s admission he had apologised to the Mexican and English delegations over the errors last weekend that contributed to their defeats. “So say thank you to Fifa for apologising to us.”

True, it wasn’t immediately clear what had prompted Carlos Batres to award Spain a free but replays suggested a hint of handball by the scorer and, perhaps more crucially, Cardozo coming very close to making contact with an attempted header while offside moments before. The two between them, at the very least equipped the referee with a better case for his defence than some of his colleagues could have managed over the past couple of weeks.

Batres, though, was more open to criticism a couple of minutes later after handing the Spanish a chance of their own to take the lead from the spot. The penalty decision itself was a little more controversial than the one that had led to Cardozo’s miss, even if David Villa did seem to seize upon the opportunity to go down after a little contact from Antolin Alcaraz.

Where Batres got himself into warmer water, though, was in ordering Xabi Alonso to retake his kick after scoring because of a slight encroachment into the area by a couple of his team-mates. The infringement was real but prompted Martino to ask why his player hadn’t had a second crack at beating Casillas.

The difference, though, was that Alonso saw his second, less forceful attempt to the other side of Justo Villar saved by the goalkeeper who then got away with blatantly taking Cesc Fabregas’ legs from under him during the close-quarters mayhem that ensued until the loose ball was eventually scrambled behind for the corner.

The excitement passed and the two sides settled back into what was, for the most part, an interesting and generally entertaining contest. The Spanish didn’t play as well as they had done in one or two of their previous games, but that was in no small part down to the fact that they weren’t allowed to.

Martino, bravely, but with ample justification, had dumped the entirety of his three-man front line for failing to score a single goal between them in the team’s opening four games, using the opportunity to change his formation and reinforce a midfield that was always going to have its work cut out holding its own.

The new strike-force of Cardozo and Valdez immediately energised the attack, doing far more to exploit Carles Puyol’s lack of pace than the Portuguese ever had, while also working hard to provide a first line of defence, enough at times to provide a significant disruption to Spanish attempts to build from the back.

Some of the improvised passing and movement in midfield between Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Alonso was still sublime, though, and had their final ball into the air been a little bit better at times – or Fernando Torres a little closer to his best – then it’s hard to see how it would have taken them quite so long to get off the mark.

As it turned out, it took seven minutes from time for an undisputed breakthrough to arrive, by which time Torres was long gone and Villa was more confidently leading an attack that had looked more dangerous since the first introduction from the bench of Fabregas and then Pedro.

As the Paraguayans began to tire, the Arsenal midfielder made an immediate impact, helping to turn possession into more incisive approach work that started to yield more clear-cut scoring possibilities.

Still, it was the young striker who finally created the decisive opening when he raced towards the edge of the box and drove firmly against the foot of the post. With the goalkeeper committed, Villa pounced on the rebound, reacting swiftly enough to evade a lunging block by Dario Veron and striking the same piece of woodwork as his team-mate.

This time, though, the ball clattered back across the goal-line behind helpless defender Paulo Da Silva and in off the back of the other post.

With so little time to go, it seemed almost certain the Paraguayans, despite having held their own so valiantly for most of the game, would now be beaten – and so it proved.

Having arrived on the pitch 10 minutes before the goal for a jaded Valdez, Roque Santa Cruz did have one great chance to push the contest into extra-time but the Manchester City striker instead rounded off a miserable few weeks at this tournament by driving a close-range shot almost straight at Casillas.

It seemed harsh on the spirited South Americans who had come within a whisker of making the semi-finals for the first time in their history. That would have represented a major triumph in itself for Martino’s men but they leave with their heads held high knowing they severely tested a side rather better equipped to deal with the challenges that still lie ahead.