Spain's coach Luis Enrique with players during a training session at the Qatar University training ground in Doha. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP via Getty ImagesLuis Enrique, the Spain coach, has asked himself whether it might be better not to win Group E and instead finish second to avoid Brazil, which is precisely why his team will not try to engineer an easy route through the World Cup.
Spain are top of the group and victory against Japan on Thursday would guarantee progress as group winners, but they also know a point would see them through to the last 16 and avoid Brazil in the quarter-final “We have reflected on it,” said Enrique. “But from a professional point of view, imagine that we speculate. ‘Okay, we want to be second, that’s in our interests.’ We get to the 95th minute and in both games it’s 0-0, 0-0, [thinking:] ‘Everything’s going great.’ And then Costa Rica go and score and Japan score. And in 15 seconds you’re out because you have been speculating for 90 minutes.
“When you’re a very good team and you want to play seven games, you want to be first. We play the team that’s second in Group F, right? And then in the quarter-final … in theory it’s Brazil. Okay, great. We play Brazil then. We can’t count like the milkmaid.”
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