Upwardly mobile Spain make life harder for Scots
HAS any nation made a more impressive start to 2017 than Spain? Their 8-1 win over fellow Euro qualifiers Switzerland in January was startling, even if it came in a friendly.
It was followed up on Wednesday with a 2-1 win over World Cup finalists Japan in the Algarve Cup. Then they beat Norway, who are ranked No 11 in the world, 3-0 on Friday.
Spain are second seeds behind England in Scotland’s Euro group and these results suggest the task facing Anna Signeul and her players in the Netherlands has just got a great deal harder.
“Spain are getting better and better,” the Scotland coach said. “Their youth players are coming through and they are a very up-and-coming nation in women’s football. The money they are starting to invest in their own league and players will make a difference.”
Back in 2012 Scotland were incredibly unlucky to lose 4-3 on aggregate to Spain in the play-off for the last place in Euro 2013. Yet for all the importance of the occasion, it was obvious from the choice of venue for the second leg – a glorified training pitch at the Spanish Federation’s headquarters outside Madrid – that women’s football wasn’t taken all that seriously.
As soon as that changed – which it appears to have done now – there was only ever going to be one direction of travel. Rapidly upwards. SCOTLAND lost their first game of the year on Friday when they went down 2-0 to a well-drilled South Korea side in the Cyprus Cup. The defeat makes an appearance in Wednesday’s final unlikely as they slipped to third in Group B, a point behind the South Koreans and Austria.
That said, winning the tournament is of secondary importance to finding ways of making gains ahead of the Euros. It was more disappointing, then, that Rachel Corsie was ruled out of the tournament with a calf problem before a ball had been kicked.
Losing the Seattle Reign central defender has almost certainly put paid to the intended, and potentially rewarding, experiment of playing with a back three at some point in Cyprus.