Friday, May 18th, 2012
Spain put in another strong performance against Serbia here, with the added bonus of qualifying for the semi-final of the Under 19 European Championships.
A hat-trick from Real Madrid’s Álvaro Morata and another from Málaga’s Juanmi saw Spain cruise to victory, though as is a regular occurrence Gerard Deulofeu stole the headlines.
Spain found their rhythm early on, and it was Morata who produced the opener after connecting with Gerard Deulofeu pass before firing in. Deulofeu had kept his head up and exploded with pace and skill against his full back, who couldn’t handle the Barcelona star. As far as other individuals go, Jose Campaña of Sevilla was performing adeptly too, never being too flash in midfield but keeping his moves neat and tidly allowing Spain to build with ease.
Just two minutes later and Juanmi doubled his side’s lead; Pablo Sarabia made an intelligent move through the middle before finding Juanmi who beat goalkeeper Nikola Perić at the second time of asking. It was all too easy, and Spain effectively shut down the game when they got a third on the break; Neat combination work from Sarabia and Morata resulted in the latter scoring.
Morata was to then have a run of chances which could’ve sealed his hat-trick but some decent stops by Perić and slightly poor finishing let him down.
Serbia still couldn’t get close to Spain, as they seemed to happily stand-off which was suicide in itself. Sarabia came close to making it four when he struck the top of the crossbar after connecting with Jon Aurtenetxe’s pass, while the Getafe man went close once more but narrowly missed.
Deulofeu meanwhile was beating his fullback time and time again, showing smart changes of pace and direction before driving in low crosses each time. The sheer velocity at which Deulofeu was playing with caused terror in the Serbia backline, as they begged for half-time whistle.
Despite being in the lead, Morata trudged off at half-time looking disappointed with himself for not sewing up a hat-trick.
He made amends though soon after the restart, when latching on to Sarabia’s well weighted pass there was more composure about his finishing and Spain were able to remove the intensity out of their game.
Although it may have been more pleasurable for the neutral to see Spain play at full speed and strength, they did what they had to by making changes and resting players. They calmly knocked the ball about and made sure no errors crept into their game holding off the Serbs quite easily.
The win now sees Spain qualify for the semi-finals, before that though they have one remaining group game in which they can feature more players who haven’t seen many minutes yet in Romania.
Spain: Badía, Carvajal, Gómez, Miquel, Aurtenetxe, Rubén Pardo, Deulofeu (Borja, 72), Juanmi (Alex, 58), Sarabia, Campaña, Morata (Muñiz, 81).
Tags: Deulofeu, European Championships, Juanmi, Morata, Sarabia, Serbia, Spain, Under-19
It seams that Spain is having a fantastic row of talents. This U19 generations is as strong as their first team so we can expect many years to see Spaniards as European and World champions.