Are the Spanish football team the death of football?

Having been all excited about the World Cup, the whole thing seemed to fall flat. All the initial optimism was washed out by a run of workmanlike performances from the big teams. The biggest shock of the first round of games was Spain's defeat to Switzerland. Brought in on a wave of enthusiasm about their flowing football, the European Champions seem to have strengthened the team with the addition of Barcelona's Pique at centre half and some flying wingers in Navas and Juan Mata.



Instead though, we saw them come up against a very well organised Swiss team, who set their stall out early and set out to frustrate them. They took their chance well and frankly, should've scored a second later on. Spain have made it through the group stages and will almost certainly crack on to the later stages of the tournament, but it has to be said, I can't say they excite me.

One of the things I enjoy about Dundee is the number of people I meet from different backgrounds and the majority of people tell me that Scottish football is shite. As I've probably mentioned before, this is nonsense. I love it. Scottish football gives me nights like this:



Which I'll never get bored of watching. Anyway, I digress, I'm not comparing Spain to the SPL, thats silly, but as a reference point, I'd far rather watch players going at it, taking on players, blood and thunder matches. What I don't want to see is Xavi standing in central midfield knocking passes 5 feet either side of him, only to receive it back, make another short pass, then some more. Passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy-passy.

The thing that really baffles me about it, is that the Spaniards are held in such high regard. In 2008, Walter Smith guided Rangers to the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester with a string of organised performances against what were player for player, probably better teams. Earlier on in that campaign, Rangers came up against Barcelona and were criticised by Lionel Messi for their 'Anti-Football' approach Messi claimed: "It's incredible. Rangers didn't want to play football. Right from the start they went for anti-football and I'm left with a bitter taste in the mouth at not having been able to win the match because we had a decent number of chances. All we lacked was the finish."We were tired and they weren't interested in trying to win so it was inevitable that the pace would drop,"

The Opta round up from the first round of games also gave some revealing stats, unsurprisingly Xavi is around the top of a lot of them.

.	Player Surname	Team	Passes Attempted Final third	Passing Accuracy Final third
.	Xavi	Spain	46	89.13%

Player Surname Team Crosses Attempted Jesus Navas Spain 19 Seitaridis Greece 10 Capdevila Spain 8
Player Surname Team Team Total Passes Passing Accuracy Melo Brazil 98 91.84% Xabi Alonso Spain 96 89.58% Rodríguez Mexico 95 93.68% Xavi Spain 94 94.68%

Along with this though, not a single Spainish player features in the top ten of shots on target (its topped by Messi on 7.) The other data is available here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/datablog/2010/jun/17/opta-world-cup-2010-data#data So what we could say is that the Spaniards are getting the ball, moving it well, getting it forward and then going back again. This is all very well and good, but in doing so it feels like they're wasting probably two of the top ten best strikers in the world. I understand that posession and pressing are the name of the game, I'm going to support Chile, with their flying wingers, manic defending, centre forwards with 20+ goals who can't get in the team and no end product from a single one of them. Go Chile!

Tonight we will carry him home.

So it is now 2010 and I'm yet to update this, my humble apologies to my fans.

Its been a strange few months and in all honesty, a few things have properly knocked me off my stride. Losing an election sucked but frankly, things are put in perspective very easily, so its onwards and upwards.

So, to football. I'm still travelling the country watching games every weekend and split my time between St Johnstone and Aberdeen mainly. Having a look at my pre-season guide seems that I was pretty much on the money (Pretty much, thanks Hearts, Kevin Rutkiewicz and JP Kissock.)

Ross Forbes has gone off the boil a bit for Motherwell, there is a player in there somewhere though, we just need to find out where he's best used. The Jim Gannon revolution came to an abrupt halt after falling out with everyone, he left and was replaced with former Scotland manager, Craig Brown. Taking on a team that looked games away from dropping like a stone and turning them into European contenders shows just how good a job he has done. A more in depth season review will appear once the fat lady has sung and Rangers win another title, so stay tuned.

The 3rd of March saw a brave new world appear at Hampden as Craig Levein lead out his first Scotland team against a weakened, but still impressive, Czech Republic side. Andy and I went along to sample the North Stand for the first time (Remember the mouthy guy that sits behind you at your local team? The guy who screams about lumping it up the park and hates possession football? The guy that contradicts himself every five or six minutes? The guy that mouths off about your players being 'SHITE', which leaves you with a tidy sum of cash after using his 'SHITE' tips as first goalscorer bets? Thats where they all go on international days and it is an absolute nightmare.) Levein picked a conservative squad, which would have seen the return of fan favourites such as Lee McCulloch bar injury (And infact did see the return of Kris Boyd) as well as a long awaited return by Andy Webster. After an awkward twenty minutes where the fantastic Tomas Rosicky showed his class, Scotland steadily worked their way back into the game. This culminated in a deep Lee Wallace cross being nodded back across goal by Barry Robson and bundled home by Scott Brown.



On the journey back to the city of discovery, my immediate feeling was one of massive relief. Levein had been saying all the right things and generally talking a good game, my worries about him actually being able to follow through with this were perhaps misguided. Levein's squad was one of few surprises outside of Garry Kenneth's call up. Given Levein's background with Dundee United players though, it is far from earth shattering. Returns for competent performers like Barry Robson and Paul Hartley gave the Scotland midfield the solidity it missed under George Burley. Given the performances of several players this season as well, Scotland have a lot of reasons to be confident. Craig Gordon's form for Sunderland has been nothing short of jaw dropping at times, married with regular game time for the White Cafu, Alan Hutton, the play of Graham Dorrans and Charlie Adam in the Championship and the return to fitness of Kevin Thomson, Scott Brown and Andy Webster, there are small sprouts of optimism.

As I said, SPL season review coming soon. Stay tuned and I promise, promise, promise to update more!

G