Two sides that played group D opening match will meet again, this time with much more at stake. Spain and Russia are fighting for the finals of the European championship which is a surprising course of events in this championship that is filled with various twists and turns and excellent outsider performances. Spain won the first game easily, 4:1 which led us all to think that Russians will as usually be sitting ducks for their rivals. But, after that failure, Hiddink’s squad got serious, managed to win current champions, Greece and then fight their way to the second round in and excellent game against Sweden. The rest is history; triumph over Netherlands is certainly a good message for Spain: Russians can match any European squad. But let us get back to the opening game, when Russia paid for being naive; they started the match with their guard down, missed a couple of chances and got cruel punishment. The loose defense was a suicide, Villa and Torres had many one-on-one situations which they solved easily. The result were four goals behind excellent Akinfeev’s back. Now we are in for a completely different game; Russia learned their lesson which doesn’t mean that they will only defend; however it is clear that Hiddink will ask his players to be very aggressive and try not to let Red Fury attackers to take the ball thirty yards away from the net. Italians have shown the way a squad should defend against Aragones’ side but luck turned its back on them in the penalty roulette. Russians are more creative, Arshavin contributes a lot, not only to the speed but also to materialisation, so we will clearly see a very uncertain match where Russians stand some chance of winning. Spain deserved to get to the semi-finals; they were more eager to win against Azzurri though the attack's efficiency was miserable.
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