It did not take long for Spain to return to business, although Luis de la Fuente’s side were put into trouble by some enterprising Englishmen. Facing the third in the last World Cup, La Roja only needed two minutes to open the score against the Three Lions. After a careless error from Marc Guéhi, who did not feel the return of Lamine Yamal behind his back, the Barcelona winger had free rein to rush towards the goal and adjust the English goalkeeper with an outside left (2nd, 0-1). Immediately put in difficulty by this rapid sanction, the English tried to react with a good breakthrough from Anthony Gordon on the left wing, but his retreating cross only found the gloves of Unai Simon in two stages in the area (5th).
PSG striker Ferran Torres was very lively during this first period, but far too imprecise to break down the English who were on borrowed time from Spanish domination. He first sent a cross from Ruiz into the English net, refused for an offside position (8th), then lost his face-to-face against the English goalkeeper James Trafford who came out to repel his shot (15th). Before the half-hour mark, he missed another opportunity to double the lead by crossing his shot too far in front of the opposing goal (27th).
By missing opportunities to set sail, Spain was bound to regret it. And in the space of a few minutes, England ended up reversing the course of the match and placing the world champions in a very unusual position for them. On a dazzling counter-attack led by Bellingham, Gordon was thrown by his teammate behind the Spanish defense before finishing to the right of Simon’s goal (36th, 1-1). English captain Harry Kane then appeared to allow the Three Lions to take control of the match, with a powerful header deflected from the thigh in front of his goal by the unfortunate Cucurella (40th, 2-1). The shock of this first day of the League of Nations was rekindled.
The Spanish bench made the difference
Invigorated by their fantastic end to the first half, Thomas Tuchel’s men stormed the Spanish goal from the restart and granted themselves another big opportunity with a cross headed by Quansah but which did not find the target (49th).
England then missed a perfect opportunity to widen the gap and complicate La Roja’s evening a little more: after contact in the area between Bellingham and Rodri, the referee finally judged the fault serious enough to award a penalty to the English. Yet a specialist in the exercise, Kane sent it onto Simon’s bar after slipping when shooting (54th).
Under pressure but still alive after this good English sequence, La Roja ended up getting his head above water and Yamal out of his box. The Spanish winger took advantage of a combination with Baena to place a shot slightly too wide to find the target (60th). But Spain has resources and often decisive substitutes: entering five minutes earlier, it was Baena who was responsible for equalizing by beating Trafford on the right (60th, 2-2). And it was once again an entrant, Mikel Oyarzabal, who came to restore the advantage to Spain with a small ball after having been served between the central defenders (74th, 2-3).
England insisted until the end to try to snatch a draw in front of their home crowd at Wembley, without managing to find the fault a third time. Spain made a successful comeback after winning the world champion title this summer and continued its impressive unbeaten streak by winning a 39th match without defeat.
