[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Exactly. I'm not saying Spain are suddenly bad just that they're an ageing squad and inevitably aren't as sharp as when they were at their peak a few years ago. They have great young players coming in but it'll obviously take some time for them to move from being transitionary figures, required to fit into the shape defined by Xavi, Alonso, Iniesta, etc., to having a system built around them.

What I've been trying to drive at I suppose is that interim tournaments like these are ideal to test out new players and tactical schemes but instead they've kept beating they same old tired horse-- it's not just age or motivation but people have now figured out how to beat them tactically--and they haven't addressed that. So it's a two-pronged challenge.

Their U21 team was fantastic btw. I had a recording of the final but I deleted it. They should give some of those whippersnappers a chance ha ha ha.