Spain

262 entrants predicted Spain to win the World Cup

356 entrants are supporting Spain

Top 10 Spain supporters

Pos	Name	Po
1	Geo   Scotland	106
2	Mike Carroll  Ireland	99
3	Hafiz Mangalji Canada	98
3	Dannar Leitmaa Estonia, Tartu	98
5	Ilse Beerse Belgium	97
6	KILIAN,S KILLERS  d	96
7	Lorne  Caracas	95
8	Will McDonald  Glasgow	93
9	Mike Cox  Thurles	92
10	JOHN GERRY KELLS	91

Group matches

Team profile

• Coach: Luis Aragonés (2004-)
• World Cup appearances: 12
• First World Cup: 1934
• Best performance at World Cup: Fourth place, 1950

The Spain national football team, commonly referred to as la selección is the national football team of Spain and is controlled by the Real Federación Española de Fútbol.

Spain has greatly underachieved in the World Cup, with their best finish being fourth place in 1950), although often being touted as pre-tournament favorites. They did win the gold medal when they hosted 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona and the 1999 World Youth Championship in Nigeria.

History

Spain made their international debut in 1920 at the Olympic Games in Belgium and came away with the silver medal. They played their first home international in 1921, beating

Belgium 2-0 in Bilbao. They also became the first non-British side to beat England when they won a friendly in Madrid 4-3 in 1929. Yet since then they have considerably under-achieved, despite La Liga being one of the strongest domestic leagues in Europe. They have won just one major trophy, the second European Championship in 1964, in which they had the benefit of home advantage. They beat the USSR 2-1 in the final in front of a crowd of 125,000 at the Bernabéu. The build-up to the match had been highly politically-charged, as Spain had refused to play in the in the USSR during the previous tournament in 1960. Jesus María Pereda put the Spanish ahead after just six minutes but they needed a late Marcelino Martínez header to win it after Galimzian Khusainov equalised with a free-kick.

At Euro 2004, Spain was drawn into group A with Portugal, Russia and Greece. The Spanish team were touted as heavy favorites for the 2004 crown by the European media. They were also expected heavy favorites to qualify from their group. On June 12th, Spain expectedly defeated Russia, 1-0. Four days later Spain faced Greece. Determined to win, Spain led the match until Greece scored an equalizer and the match ended 1-1. In their last game against Portugal, Spain needed to win to qualify for the quarterfinals. However a goal from Nuno Gomes faded Spain's hopes of advancing. The same day Greece were defeated 2-1 by Russia but moved ahead to claim second place on goal difference. As a result Spain were eliminated from Euro 2004.

World Cup record

• 1930 - Did not enter
• 1934 - Quarterfinals
• 1938 - Withdrew due to civil war
• 1950 - Fourth place
• 1954 - Did not qualify
• 1958 - Did not qualify
• 1962 - Round 1
• 1966 - Round 1
• 1970 - Did not qualify
• 1974 - Did not qualify
• 1978 - Round 1
• 1982 - Round 2
• 1986 - Quarterfinals
• 1990 - Round 2
• 1994 - Quarterfinals
• 1998 - Round 1
• 2002 - Quarterfinals
• 2006 - Qualified

Encyclopedia information from Wikipedia article 'Spain national football team'. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.