Qatar 2022 World Cup Guide

Despite his extremely poor record for the Spain national team, Diego Costa looks set to start against England in one of the several friendly matches lined up for the former world champions ahead of the Euro 2016.

The Chelsea striker faced a lot of criticism for his poor performances at the World Cup 2014. In fact, he has managed only one goal in nine appearances for Spain. This has led to suggestions that Costa is the right fit for the national team and that manager Vicente del Bosque should look at options like Alvaro Morata, who have been in fine scoring form.

Spain went to great lengths in order to persuade Diego Costa to represent them at international level.

This was on the back of his impressive campaign with Atletico Madrid. However, the striker has been disappointing – at least on the international scene – ever since making his appearance for Spain. The biggest disappointment came at the World Cup 2014 when the striker failed to score even a single goal in the group stages and it saw the world champions suffer a meek exit. Since his debut in 2014, the striker has made nine appearances in all competitions but has scored only one goal.

England manager Roy Hodgson stated that he was not happy with the performances of his players in the draw with Republic of Ireland. England could only manage a 0-0 draw in the first friendly during the summer.

This result is not the ideal preparation ahead of the team’s away game against Slovenia. The former Liverpool boss is expecting much better performances – especially from captain Wayne Rooney – when the team travel to the Eastern European country.

England appear to be extremely comfortable in the Euro 2016 qualification stages after having won five out of the opening five games. This has seen them establish a healthy six-point advantage with only a couple of matches left.

Carlo Ancelotti is one of the highest rated managers in football as the Italian coach has been in charge of top clubs from around the world and secured huge pieces of silverware along the way but this wasn’t enough for him to save his job at Real Madrid as he was sacked.

After losing the Spanish league race against Barcelona and being knocked out of the Champions League, Ancelotti was sacked as the head coach of Real Madrid.

Rumors are spreading around and all fingers are pointing towards Rafael Benitez as he is the front-runner of becoming the new coach of Real Madrid and Spain’s Vicente del Bosque believes that Benitez would be a good choice.

Spain might have lost to Holland the other day, but, the manager Vicente Del Bosque reckons his boys were not the second best in the encounter.

According to Del Bosque, La Roja undoubtedly played better Football and if luck had favoured a tad, they would have turned it around.

Spain went 0-2 down in the first quarter of the game itself and despite trying hard from there onwards, they couldn’t do anything.

Spain did have the possession for a large fraction of the game, but, possession counts for nothing.
After conceding that sort of lead early, what Spain needed was to sneak in the goals, but, it wasn’t to be.

The goals just did not get made and the lead of the opposition remained intact.

Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has claimed that both England manager Roy Hodgson and Spain boos Vicente del Bosque committed huge mistakes at the World Cup 2014.

England and Spain endured very disappointing World Cup’s after they were knocked out at the group stages. England have not failed to get past quarter-finals of recent major tournaments, but they were expected to at least reach the knockout stages. Spain, on the other hand, were expected to go until the final stages of the tournament as the defending champions. Yet, it was surprising to see both these strong European teams suffer embarrassing exits.

After two consecutive defeats question are being raised as to how Barcelona can best deploy Luiz Suarez.

Barcelona’s coach Luis Enrique has been very sour and sarcastic in his replies and after the defeat has said that the hunting season was open and that they were in for a nice week. The defender Dani Alves remarked very soon that there was going to be a lot of criticism that will come along with all of this and sarcasm. He also said that it was the worst board ever in history. And nearly at the same time there were small groups chanting the same and also had banners.

Spain has mightily taken over Luxembourg with a great 4-0 score in the Euro 2016 qualifying match which displayed great showmanship from the Spanish armada. The match is also important for being the game that marked the 1st international goal from Diego Costa.

The 4 goals were netted by Silva in the 27th minute, Alcacer in the 42nd minute, Costa in the 69th minute & Bernat in the 88th minute. No Spanish striker had ever needed so long for getting onto his 1st international goal yet Costa has finally achieved it- getting off mark for the adopted nation post 515 minutes while being in the prestigious red jersey.

Vicente Del Bosque is not going to be the manager of the Spain national football team after the European Championships of 2016.
He has also slammed his critics who have been saying that he has occupied his position for a bit too long and that, he should have moved away right after that World Cup glory in 2010.
Del Bosque finds those remarks absolutely ridiculous. According to him, if you achieve something very big, you should try and do it again rather than be content and just leave.
Del Bosque does have a point here. He has two European Cup titles to his name with Real Madrid and he also has two big international titles i.e. the World Cup and the Euro Championships with his country Spain. So, it’s clear that he is a person who doesn’t get complacent too easily.

Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone has claimed that he does not know when Slovenian national team goalkeeper Jan Oblak will return to first-team action. The 21-year-old recently completed a £ 15 million move to Atletico. He has been playing at Benfica for the last few seasons, but he is regarded as one of the talented goalkeepers in the world. Atletico wasted no time in completing the deal after they were made clear that Thibaut Courtois will not be returning for a fourth consecutive loan spell from Chelsea.