- Spain beat Albania 0-1, sending them into the knockout stages of Euro 2024
- Ferran Torres scored the game’s only goal, but sealed Albania’s tournament exit
- LISTEN to It’s All Kicking Off! Steve Clarke out? Has the Scotland manager taken them as far as he can?
Calmly and relentlessly, Spain advance, demonstrating on a night of Albanian passion and partisanship on the Rhine that this team has a real depth of winners. England can reflect that Albania’s defeat guarantees their progress as a third-placed team. It’s cold comfort.
Luis de la Fuente fielded a reserve side, making ten changes in the knowledge that Spain would progress as group winners. And some B-team it was.
Players less well known or appreciated than the 16-year-old Lamine Yamal, who arrived from the bench for the last half hour, but serious technical operators, nonetheless.
Dani Olmo, the 26-year-old Leipzig forward, operating so cleverly between the lines – carving open the early goal that took the breath away and, you might say, was even worth the €300 tickets had been flogged for outside.
A ball traced along surface the pitch by him into the path of the former Manchester City player Ferran Torres, who arced it into the net. Torres did not even need to scan the horizon to know where he was going to send it – in off the post – and blanked the encroaching Albanian defender, Mario Mitaj, as if he didn’t exist.
Though the two members of the left flank combination which had quietly pulled Italy apart – Nico Williams and Marco Cucurella – were rested, the Bayer Leverkusen wing back Alex Grimaldo stepped up and produced something similar down that same wing. There was the impressive Mikel Merino, a midfield anchor – pressing, passing and getting into good positions.
There was Spanish profligacy, too. Impossible to judge whether the absence of clinical finishing was significant, when these are the largely only the players who will be asked to deputise.
It made for a finish befitting the beautiful presence of Albania at these championships. Because in the week or so since their early goal against Italy briefly set the tournament on fire, they have kept the flame alight.
They streamed up the banks of the Rhine to this ground in warm sunshine, many in their distinctive Geleshe hats, which looked like white Christmas puddings.
They bounced up and down in unison, performing a kind of front-facing ‘Poznan’, and set off the flares which saw the early minutes of the game played in a smoky haze. They, like the Scottish, will be sorely missed amidst the homogeneous shape the Euros will now start to take.
You wouldn’t have given them a prayer at the interval. Their Inter Milan player Kristjan Asllani’s 20-yard shot brought Arsenal’s David Raya flying to his left to get both gloves to it. But the scale of the task still seemed akin to climbing the Albanian Alps in flip flops. The team had dropped deep, without the remotest pace to get past Spain.
It was a night their players will be talking about when they are old and grey, though, and they will not die wondering what more they could have done in the later stages.
Slough-born substitute Armando Broja, on loan at Fulham from Chelsea last season, tried to lob Raya from a free kick and watched him save. He also had the presence of mind to roll a ball under his studs and flick it goalwards at the death. Raya was equal to that too.
By the finish, Spain had faced more shot on target – four – than they recorded – three – for the first time in a Euros match for eight years.
Their adoring faithful greeted them at the end, fortified in the belief that this young team could achieve something significant in the years to come. Spain don’t look as if they’ll need to wait so long.