Spain suffered a 2-1 defeat to Switzerland on Saturday night, falling behind Portugal in their penultimate Nations League match. La Roja conceded twice from set plays and it left their manager Luis Enrique frustrated with a mistake-laden performance.
The strong-willed Asturian went for a line-up that included something of an unseen defence, including of Eric Garcia, Pau Torres and Jordi Alba, two of whom are not enjoying regular minutes this season. Marco Asensio has barely played for Real Madrid this campaign too, but was given a starting role in up front.
After the match, Luis Enrique was asked to evaluate the performance and Sport carried his answer, which had one key theme.
“The match starts with the same intention as always, but with an opponent that presses very well, that is physically very strong and that stopped us playing our football.”
“In the first half we were sloppy, in the second not. I don’t recall a match with so many technical errors from so many players. Nothing of what I was seeing this week. And then we went into the break behind.”
The second period was a little more encouraging however.
“We started better, more precise, and we managed to equalise. But when we did that, we concede a goal from a corner. It is part of football, it never stops surprising you. They said that beating Switzerland would be easy and now we have seen that nothing is easy.”
Spain must now travel to Portugal and secure the three points if they want to progress to the Nations League semi-finals once more. Portugal beat Czech Republic 4-0 on Saturday evening and a similar number of errors from Spain may see a similar result to theirs against Switzerland.
