MADRID, 10 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish women’s soccer team will have a tough test this Tuesday at the El Sadar Stadium in Pamplona (8:30 p.m./Teledeporte) against the United States, current world champions and number one in the FIFA ranking, against whom they hope to continue gaining competitive experience and also achieve a new attendance record.
The national team faces its second high-level friendly in its new stage and with the hope of once again standing up to a rival that it has never beaten in its history and that also arrives with almost its best team and with a desire for revenge after lose last Friday against England (2-1) in a packed Wembley.
76,893 spectators attended the match between the current European champion and the current world champion, a figure that demonstrates the interest in women’s football in the United Kingdom and the boom that continues after the European Championship. The Sadar will not fill its capacity (23,516), but the goal of exceeding the 10,444 fans who came to Riazor to watch Spain-Azerbaijan in October 2019 and setting a new record for attendance in a women’s team match is more feasible.
This would be good news in a moment of turbulence that continues to be experienced around the national team and the non-call of many of its main players. In addition, Spain will need the encouragement of the public as a plus to surely protect the great power of world football and probably even higher level than Sweden.
Jorge Vilda’s team, which did not have the best of receptions last Friday at the Nuevo El Arcángel de Córdoba, added a positive draw (1-1) against the current Olympic runners-up, in a match that went from less to more, especially in a good second part. Instead, the challenge is even greater against the current world champion, who has never been beaten or even tied.
THREE TIGHT WINS BY THE AMERICANS
On three occasions the Spanish and American faces have been seen, all of them in the last three years. The first time was in January 2019, at the Rico Pérez in Alicante, with a 0-1 defeat (Press) months before they met again in the round of 16 of the World Cup in France, where penalties were scored by Megan Rapinoe They annulled Jenni Hermoso’s goal. In March 2020, and with the pandemic exploding around the world, Spain continued to close the gap and only fell in the She Believes Cup by an 87th-minute goal from Ertz.
Now, this ‘new’ Spain will have the main mission of gaining more competitive experience for the future and what it may hold. Without almost all their great references in recent years, the victory seems very complicated and more so against a rival, whose football has also recently been shaken by the report that revealed systematic abuses in its structure and that it comes with almost its entire arsenal, except the stellar Alex Morgan.
Even so, in the ranks of the United States there will be figures such as the charismatic Rapinoe or the captain Becky Sauerbrunn, two soccer players who showed their full support for the 15 Spanish internationals who sent the mail to the RFEF requesting not to be summoned for these two matches.
Jorge Vilda will have to decide if he takes the game more as a rehearsal and bets on rotations to distribute the minutes and see the youngest after the most experienced players played against Sweden, among whom the midfielder Irene Guerrero will not be, who He had to leave the concentration due to injury. In ‘favor’, a lower pressure due to the theoretical potential difference.