re: Am I the only person who sees that Spain....

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what do you do then, bench one of the best strikers in the world?

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Yes. Torres obviously is not 100% physically OR mentally and seems to get frustrated pretty easily. There is no reason to force putting him on the field, ESPECIALLY with David Villa playing out of his frickin mind right now.

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those are 2 guys you just have to put on the field because they can change the game at any moment.

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Again, they may be 2 of the best players individually on the team, but there is no reason to try and force a partnership between them, especially this late in the WC...

Bench Torres, throw Fabregas into the starting 11 and run a 4-5-1. Spain will possess the frick out of the ball, wait for the young Germans to have a quick lapse in concentration/get anxious, and slip a nice ball in to Villa for a quick strike or force a rash challenge for a dangerous FK.

Spain's back line >>>>>>>> Argentina's back line so Germany shouldn't get as many chances or open looks, and IMO what killed the Argentinians was the lack of the midfield connection from the backs to the forwards. It always seemed like direct long ball play from the outside backs to the frontmen, who were then just beaten in the air. Messi sometimes had to go into his own half to get the ball from Demichellis/Heinze just to try and make something happen. A midfield combination of Xavi, Alonso, Iniesta, AND Fabregas will be able to successfully connect Puyol/Pique to Villa and be much more threatening than Argentina was.

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germany's passing accuracy of 91.54% is the best of the tournament so far

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dandy lion welcome back. where have you been.

i would never claim germany has the prettist football when we dominated back in the 70's but we won, which i consider more important. but i would never try to argue that a team was not playing prettier football than them just because i didn't like them. i liked the spain od the last euro, but this team is not at that same level, they barely made it to the quarters

Germany is going to absorb pressure then hit Spain on the counter. The thing that makes Germany's counter so good is that their wingers are willing to track back and play defense after the counter.

England's midfield isn't bad going forward, they just suck tracking back. Argentina has good players but they ruined spacing for each other. Spain has a tendency to cut down on spacing for their teammates, Xavi is great but he negates spacing so much sometimes when he dribbles toward a teammate to make a 5 yard pass. If Spain doesn't use the spacing to their advantage, Schweinsteiger and Khedira will be able to break everything up before it even gets to Mertesacker and Friedrich.

That's one of the things I was saying I didn't like about Spain, apparently he was out of form but I like him much more than Busquets.

I think Germany is going to try to exploit Capdevilla and Ramos to lure out Pique/Puyol giving space for Klose to run through.

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A midfield combination of Xavi, Alonso, Iniesta, AND Fabregas will be able to successfully connect Puyol/Pique to Villa and be much more threatening than Argentina was.

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I think the other thing that was in play with Argentina was that their back 4 did not have the speed to match up with Muller, Ozil, Podolski, and Klose. Bastian Schweinsteiger was faster than them for crying out loud! I think they will find it harder to counter attack if anything, Spain's mid-fielders are all defensive stalwarts who cover a lot of ground, to go with their pin point precision passing, and speed.

In my opinion, the mid-field and defense favors Spain while Germany has the better strikers.

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at the beach

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nice to know someone that has a life and doesn't post from their vacation


mundaka?

nice a lot of history in the Cantabria. i'm sure the sights at the beach are nice also