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#3: Spain neutralize Wales’ directness
When the Spanish midfielders troubled Wales through their extensively long stretches of possession play, Giggs’ side had no option but to try to recover the possession through the press or wait for a defender to intercept the ball and then build from the back.
Ashley Williams’ defensive abilities have waned away to an extent but his ball-playing skills are still intact as such. He shifted the ball to the flanks with some good passes and Ampadu drove ahead through the centre very well.
However, the inability to deal with the press applied by the Spanish midfielders meant that the Welsh team could never attain a sustained period of dominance on the attacking front. The presence of Harry Wilson surely added some more drive centrally as the Derby County attacking midfielder ran directly at the Spanish defenders and tried to create some instability in Enrique’s backline.
He drifted out wide and earned a free kick as Ramos lethargically fouled him from a promising free-kick taking position. Wilson was always on the move, directly picking out the wingbacks or trying to play one-twos with Ramsey. However, none of the sparse attacking moves materialized into something productive and Giggs definitely needs to work a lot on every minute aspect of his team’s style of play.
They weren’t helped with Gareth Bale’s absence either as the Real Madrid forward inducts an incisive sharpness in the frontline, which was sorely lacking yesterday. Sam Vokes was quite slow to run behind the Spanish backline and Ramos had his work sorted against the Burnley forward.
Vokes’ limited abilities meant that this Welsh side was unable to connect the final dot in their style of play and hence failed to score until the dying embers of the game. Ramsey dropped deeper, drifted wider and tried to break the Spanish defence centrally through some slick passes too.
However, they were unable to decipher another style of play like Spain did through Suso and hence they become much more predictable and easier to handle for Enrique’s side eventually.
