Wednesday, July 7, 2010

World Cup 2010: Del Bosque already focused on final

Carles Puyol

Highlights - Germany 0-1 Spain

Spain boss Vicente del Bosque urged his players to go on and win the World Cup final only moments after their 1-0 semi-final victory against Germany.

Carles Puyol's second-half header put Spain in the final for the first time and Del Bosque is already focused on beating Netherlands on Sunday.

He said: "Our players carried out their job in a magnificent way.

"But let's think about the game in front of us. We're in good shape physically - let's try to win."

Puyol grabbed the winner in the 73rd minute, powering home an unstoppable header from Xavi's pin-point corner.

It was just reward for arguably Spain's best performance of the tournament so far, one which saw them control possession for large periods and restrict Germany - who had been prolific in attack in the lead up to the last-four clash - to only a handful of half chances.

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In the end, Spain had 13 attempts to Germany's five, and Del Bosque said: "From defence through to attack I think we played a great game."

Those sentiments were echoed by leading striker David Villa.

Villa is top of the World Cup scoring charts with five goals - and Puyol's strike against Germany was in fact the first of La Furia Roja's seven goals that Villa did not either score or create.

And he says Spain must now go on and add the world title to their Euro 2008 triumph.

"We've shown that in the big moments we can grow even more," he said. "We should have scored more goals, but one from Puyol has put us in the final.

"The group deserves this but we want more. We are happy to be in the final, that was our objective, but now we want to be champions."

But Spain defender Gerard Pique insisted his side face a tough match against the Dutch in Johannesburg.

The Barcelona centre-back produced a fine performance alongside Puyol to keep Germany at bay in Durban, but asked if his team should be worried about Netherlands in the final, he told BBC Five Live: "Yes, of course.

"The Netherlands have a lot of good players - [Arjen] Robben, [Robin] Van Persie, [Wesley] Sneijder - and we have to try to stop them.

"But at the same time we need to play our game, to pass the ball around like we know we can, and create chances.

"Sometimes we can overplay it, and we don't shoot on goal enough. But I think that at the moment we are on a great run and if the opposition do not score, one goal is enough to win the game."

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