Spain held in first goalless draw

cabo verde played it exactly right imo, keep the shape, dont get dragged around, make spain work for every yard and then let the frustration do the rest, people call it parking the bus like its some insult but when you do it with that much discipline it becomes a proper performance and not just a desperate scramble
 
Was in the pub and there was this one lad in a Spain shirt who spent the whole first half saying it would be four or five and by the end he had his pint in both hands just staring at the screen in silence while the rest of us were absolutely loving it, and then the bloke behind the bar started laughing because every time Cabo Verde cleared the ball it felt like the place got louder, proper strange atmosphere for a 0-0 but thats football isnt it, one minute youre bored and the next youre fully invested in a team you were barely thinking about an hour earlier, and now I cant stop thinking about how many people must have had accumulators ruined by this, absolute chaos
 
Spain will be disappointed because they had enough control to expect more, but Cabo Verde deserve equal praise for making the match so awkward. That balance between criticism and credit is probably the fairest way to view it.
 
The officials let this become a free-for-all and thats what annoys me most because once the game gets into that rhythm the better side is always the one that ends up punished, Spain were trying to build something and every little stoppage or soft decision just killed momentum, and then you get the usual nonsense where one team is expected to make all the running while the other can slow everything down and nobody in charge seems bothered, its maddening because you just know if a bigger European side had been on the receiving end the commentary would have been completely different, absolute joke of a night from that point of view
 
Spain were supposed to be the team with the quality and the control and instead they looked like a side that had no clue how to break down a disciplined opponent, and honestly one player in particular just kept making the wrong choice over and over and over again, every time the moment opened up it seemed to close because of him and it was infuriating to watch, you could almost feel the frustration spreading through the team, and when that happens in a tournament game it becomes a snowball, one bad touch turns into two, then the crowd gets restless, then the whole thing becomes a mess and you are left wondering how a team with that much expectation can look so flat and so wasteful
 
Cabo Verde deserve enormous credit for the way they stayed compact and denied Spain space between the lines. Spain controlled possession for spells, but without enough incisiveness it became predictable rather quickly.
 
Spain will get roasted for this and to be fair they probably deserve a bit of it, but Cabo Verde were brilliant in how they stayed together and refused to panic, every clearance, every block, every little ugly bit of defending mattered, and once the frustration set in you could see Spain getting worse and worse and more desperate and it just felt like one of those nights where the underdog has the script and the favourite is left chasing shadows and getting more and more annoyed about it
 
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