Guillem Balague, Spanish journalist: <\/p>\n
Spain – the best team.<\/p>\n
France – the best player and the most frightening attack.<\/p>\n
Argentina – the best idea: doing more with less than anyone else.<\/p>\n
England – two world-class players on form.<\/p>\n
All four semi-finalists have what is needed to win the tournament. <\/p>\n
If Spain take the ball off France and stop their counters – plus if they are more efficient than they have been – they have a very good chance of making it to the final. <\/p>\n
But they have to play the perfect game, with the perfect (or a very good) Lamine Yamal.<\/p>\n
Argentina will try to make the game against England uneventful, and then wait for a moment of brilliance from Lionel Messi or Julian Alvarez. But they have been playing with fire.<\/p>\n
England are still trying to find their identity but they have a huge amount of personality and two world-class stars. <\/p>\n
A final of Spain v England would be incredible. And in a way a win-win for me, but I would like England to win a World Cup soon. This could be the summer.<\/p>\n
Spanish fans in the United States:<\/p>\n
Lionel: France will be tough but I think we can beat them and, if we do, we have a strong chance. We are strong in attack and strong in defence. The only downside is Pedri hasn’t played at this top level yet.<\/p>\n
Jack: Argentina are looking strong but England can’t be ruled out. They have Harry Kane, who is one of the most difficult strikers in the world.<\/p>\n
Michel: Spain will win the tournament, I have no doubt. No one is giving us a chance against France but we will control the match and beat them. The winners of that game will win the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guillem Balague, Spanish journalist: Spain – the best team. France – the best player and the most frightening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-548884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}