Spain’s 2010 World Cup winning coach Vicente Del Bosque (right) with Al Sadd player Xavi during his visit to Doha recently.
By Sports Reporter/Doha
Spain’s 2010 FIFA World Cup winning coach Vicente Del Bosque has said that Xavi Hernández was crucial in his team’s march to their maiden title in South Africa, and believes he now has another world’s best midfielder in his team in the form of Sergio Busquets of FC Barcelona.
“We had some difficult moments in 2010,” Del Bosque told www.sc.qa in an exclusive interview at the Aspire Academy in Doha. “We must not forget that we lost our first match against Switzerland and it was very hard for us, because winning a World Cup is not easy. There are many great teams and we were fortunate we could count on a generation of very good players led by Xavi Hernández on the pitch.”
64-year-old De Bosque, who replicated his 2010 triumph two years later at the European Championship in Ukraine and Poland, continued: “Xavi was one of the players that led the group on the pitch and off it in terms of ensuring good inter-personal relationships. Both things are equally important. We got on very well within the team, and this teamwork laid the foundation to our success. We did have good players, and we were determined that Spain had to be a world champion.”
Looking at Spain’s next generation of players, the former Real Madrid manager said he had “no doubt” that Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets was currently the best player in the world in his position.
“Busquets and Xavi are different type of players. Sergio is certainly a midfielder who will lead the team like Xavi did. We also have the young Thiago [Alcántara] and Koke. And, of course, we still have Andrés Iniesta, David Silva, Cesc Fábregas and Santi Cazorla. All these players have served us well and are still very good. I’ve had no doubts about Busquets since winning in 2010. We can’t forget that he was attacked heavily during that defeat against Switzerland, and we stood the test. We believed in him, and he showed us that we were right.”
The coach who twice led Real Madrid to the UEFA Champions League title as well as the Spanish league crown also believes in the sporting mission of Qatar – a country he first visited as a Real Madrid youth coach during the 1995 FIFA U20 World Cup in Doha.
“The Doha of 1995 was totally different to what Qatar is today, and especially in relation to what we are seeing here with the Aspire Academy. You can see that the government cares about sports and about the training of its young people, and this is extremely important to any society and country,” the former Real Madrid midfielder added.
De Bosque, who has announced that Euro 2016 will be his final coaching assignment with his home country, said he looked forward to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar because of the compact nature of it. “The distances we had in Brazil will be forgotten. We will all be in the same situation, and this will always be beneficial. I think FIFA has the obligation of taking football to every corner of the world. It is a universal sport and we want the best for football. We are passionate. We are ‘romantic’ about football, so the idea seems good to us. Qatar are investing a lot of money in sports and have realised that football is an extraordinary tool for the education of society, and this is very good for the sport.”
Del Bosque was also optimistic about Spain’s chances of defending their title at Euro 2016 next summer: “Hopefully we will. We are preparing for it. The qualifiers were difficult for us. We could have qualified with a little more ease, but we had a difficult period over the early stages. And now we hope to repeat the success of Kiev. Germany and France are strong candidates. Belgium, Italy, Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal and Russia will be tough opponents.”
Talking about which players he will take to France next summer, Del Bosque added that Chelsea’s current crisis would mean that a constant assessment would be taking place over the next six months.
“For the last call-up we had four Chelsea players – César Azpilicueta, Fábregas, Pedro and Diego Costa. We still have four months until our next round of friendlies in March, and a little longer to go for the Euro, and we value them as much as all the others. We will try to bring the best to France.”
The coach who united players of arch-rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona and delivered two major back-to-back international titles hoped the future holds more trophies for ‘La Furia Roja’: “I have been surrounded by football my entire life and Spain had never got close to winning a World Cup. In 2010 it was a feeling of having done things well, of having fulfilled the goal. The reality is that we did enjoy it a lot, and I hope it won’t be Spain’s only World Cup win. Hopefully we will be able to win other World Cups in the near future.”
