MADRID, (Reuters) – With a limitless supply of attacking players, Spain head to Euro 2012 with all the attributes required to break down the tightest of defences, according to former national team coach and current China boss Jose Antonio Camacho.
The world and European champions made it a clean sweep of victories in their three warm up games with a 1-0 win over China on Sunday.
Spain coach Vicente del Bosque had the luxury of bringing on Andres Iniesta as a second-half substitute in Seville and the Barcelona midfielder laid on the 84th-minute winner for David Silva as the hard-working visitors ran out of steam.
“Everyone is going to try and play Spain the way we did, with a regimented defence and looking to play on the counter-attack,” Camacho, Spain boss between 1998 and 2002, told reporters after the loss.
“If we’d had another rival in front of us we probably would not have lost, but Spain has infinite alternatives.
“If one player goes off, another who is just as good comes on, and furthermore he has fresh legs. When you put together players as good as these it is impossible to predict what they are going to do.”
Iniesta finally breached the Chinese defence with a darting run off the left flank and a pull back for the outstanding Silva to stroke home.
Spain had lacked a cutting edge in the first period when much of the attention had been on Del Bosque’s decision to start with Sevilla striker Alvaro Negredo up front in place of Chelsea’s Fernando Torres. It is still not clear who Del Bosque will opt to start with against Italy in their Group C opener on Sunday in the absence of injured leading scorer David Villa.
Negredo is considered to be a player better suited to linking up with Spain’s ball-hogging midfielders rather than the explosive Torres, while Athletic Bilbao’s towering Fernando Llorente is seen more as a game-changing substitute.
