Spain lose first World Cup qualifying match since 1993

THE SPANISH national football team has lost its first World Cup qualifying match since 1993 as they suffer defeat to Sweden in Stockholm

Spain travelled to Stockholm today, Thursday, September 2, to play Sweden in their Group B qualifier for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, and Luis Enrique’s team couldn’t have hoped for a better start than when Valencia’s Carlos Soler – making his first team international debut – collected a pass from Barcelona defender Jordi Alba, and smashed a superb half-volley into the Sweden net past Robin Olsen, to put the Spanish into the lead after only four minutes.

With Spain’s constant problem of finding the net at international level, Soler’s strike must have been seen by many as the start of a goal-fest, but, as the Swedes kicked off again, only 12 seconds later, it was Real Sociedad’s Alexander Isak who took advantage of a defensive mistake by Sergio Busquets to slam the ball home to level the scores at 1-1.

Try as they might, the Spanish could not find a breakthrough, and to make things worse, after 57 minutes, it was the turn of the Swedish fans’ favourite, Viktor Claesson, who controlled the pass from Dejan Kulusevski, before blasting it beyond Unai Simon into the Spanish goal from twelve yards out.

With only the top team in each group going through automatically to the World Cup Finals in the Middle East, a defeat would see Sweden topping the group on nine points, and Spain on seven, leaving them in danger of missing out, so they had to at least secure the draw, but it was not to be.

Denmark was the last team to beat Spain, back in 1993, in Copenhagen, and this defeat against another Scandinavian side brought an end to La Roja’s very impressive 66-match unbeaten run, during which they had won 52, and drawn 14.

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