That defensive solidity begins with Unai Simon.<\/p>\n
The Spain goalkeeper continues to rewrite history as he extended his remarkable run without letting in a goal at the World Cup to a record 609 minutes, keeping Cristiano Ronaldo and company at bay in Dallas. <\/p>\n
“Portugal dictated most of the game, but Rafael Leao did not offer that extra spark, neither did the other substitutes,” said Balague. <\/p>\n
“Spain defended in numbers and collectively, they tracked back a lot. They individually sorted out problems. So we haven’t needed a miracle save from Simon.” <\/p>\n
During this tournament, Simon has surpassed Walter Zenga’s mark of 517 consecutive minutes without conceding for Italy, as well as his compatriot Iker Casillas’ benchmark of 476.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Simon, Aymeric Laporte and Pau Cubarsi are at the heart of their defence, while Pedro Porro and Marc Cucurella provide the width from full-back.<\/p>\n
That back-four has started three of Spain’s five matches at this World Cup so far, with Marcos Llorente deputising for Porro at right-back in the other two.<\/p>\n
Balague added: “It also helps that Rodri is reaching his best version and he has had two extraordinary games – he is the lighthouse of the team. <\/p>\n
“The partnership between Laporte and Cubarsi is perfect for the way Spain plays – moving the ball around, driving with it, and defending with a lot of space in behind.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That defensive solidity begins with Unai Simon. The Spain goalkeeper continues to rewrite history as he extended his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-748103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}