Spain won Group D today and advanced to the knockout round by pulling out a last-minute victory against a stubborn Swedish side.

No classic this … it was a match that resembled an arcade game, with a recalcitrant Spanish team forced to mix it up in the area with a bulkier, harder and more direct Sweden.

It wasn’t necessarily a deserved win for the Spaniards, who looked markedly slower today than they had against Russia and who saw their normally clinical passing style desert them for long stretches of the afternoon. But, it is not quite accurate so say the win was undeserved either. Sweden looked out of gas by the hour mark and was content to absorb and defend for the remainder of the match. It may well be an omen for Spain’s future, for up until the 92nd minute, it looked once more like the ‘blahs’ had settled in over the national team camp.

David Villa’s goal ended an hour-long 1-1 logjam and broke open a Sweden side that is traditionally extremely difficult to beat. Cutting past Petter Hansson and Olof Mellberg with pure speed, Villa’s goal, plucked from Joan Capdevila’s hopeful ball out of the back after stripping Markus Rosenberg, crushed a Swedish team that had been playing for a draw for almost a half hour.

Until Villa’s goal, Spain looked to be settling in to what has been an all too-familiar tournament pattern for them. Play one great game, one middling one, and then fall off the cliff. The heroes of their first outing against Russia were largely absent this afternoon, with Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas and Xavi all struggling through irrelevant outings and Fernando Torres and Villa failing to get adequate service.

Credit a dogged if dull Swedish side that has shown many times that it can defuse even the swiftest opponents with a well-placed knock on the shins. Tough play by Fredrik Stoor and the increasingly rustic Freddie Ljungberg were a drag on a normally graceful Spanish attack. Sweden lived dangerously, but won their gambles, notably just before halftime when Johan Elmander clattered David Silva away in what surely was a deserved penalty overlooked by the Dutch referee Pieter Vink.

Torres opened the game with a deceptively simple, almost too-easy goal from a corner kick passed on by Silva. The picture-perfect execution seemed to indicate this could be another easy go for the would-be champs.

But with the departure of Carlos Puyol to injury, Spain’s back line became unsettled, allowing Henrik Larsson and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to start carving away. A smartly taken restart found Stoor alone on the wide right. His swerving cross found Ibrahimovic to put the Swedes level in the 34th, and had he remained on the field, the Inter Milan scorer might well have had another and Sweden, not Spain might be top of the section tonight.

But, with Ibrahimovic sidelined by a knee injury at the start of the second half, the Swedes rapidly became content to play spoiler, making deft tackles that obscured just how quickly the side was tiring. Goalkeeper Andreas Isaksson was rattled after taking a taking a knee to the jaw from Villa, but did enough to deny what was devolving into a routine Spanish attack with little imagination or flair behind it.

Spain now faces a meaningless closer with Greece, able to rest any players they wish. The Swedes will need at least a draw against Russia.

Against the prevailing feelings of a game draining away to a draw, Spain ended the night on a high note. Sweden, on the other hand, is left to rue a late collapse and must regroup.

The real Greeks showed up today in Salzburg. They’re terrible, and they’re justifiably going home. A 1-0 loss to Russia, as profligate a team as one can ever find, left the Greeks beached.

Greece tried hard, but as their coach Otto Rehagel had pointed out earlier in the week, his team has no scorers. He might have added that his team also has no midfield and little idea what to do with the ball once they’ve got it, which today wasn’t all that often. At least the Greeks didn’t pass the ball back and forth in their own half as they did against Sweden, yet had Russia played someone other than the hilariously off-target Roman Pavlyuchenko as their striker, this game would have been over after 45 minutes.

Russia won on one of the more bizarre goals you’ll ever see. A cross from Dmitry Torbinsky floated to the far post and seemed to be drifting into touch, but inexplicably Greek ‘keeper Antonis Nikopolidis came off his line to chase it down. Sergei Semak kept the ball in play when Nikolidis could only wave goodbye to the ball — and the tournament as it turned out — deftly flipping it back over his own shoulder to Konstantin Zyryanov, who tapped it home. It was a howler of an error from the Greek ‘keeper and it iced the game for the Russians with nearly a full hour to go.

From there, things went downhill rapidly. The Greeks began to play to type, making crunching, wild tackles while the Russians wasted chance after chance. As the gloom settled over the Greek bench and viewers started checking their watches, even ref Roberto Rosetti could be seen smiling wryly at the mess in front of him.

The Russians rained shots into the stands, into the boards, and at times just completely missed kicking the ball altogether. The Greeks barely got a shot on goal, and when they did, Igor Akinfeev had little to no trouble mopping it up or simply picked up the rebound off the advertising boards behind him. There was plenty of effort and emotion but so little skill on display that had this not been a tournament match most folks would simply have found something better to watch.

The Russians now must win against Sweden next week while Greece will play that meaningless game against Spain. And then, mercifully, this group will be over and quickly forgotten. Sadly, Greece’s win in Portugal now stands revealed as a fluke. Right now, the team is pointless in all senses of the word. Where will Rehhagel find his next job?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 1:28 am and is filed under Football, World Of Sports for. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.