Mikel Merino believes Spanish fans will see a \u201crecognisable team\u201d in their World Cup qualifier against Georgia despite injuries to key players.<\/p>\n
Lamine Yamal, who assisted three times in two games during the last international break, and Nico Williams were both left out of Luis de la Fuente\u2019s side due to their respective injuries.<\/p>\n
Spain made a perfect start to their qualifying campaign for next summer\u2019s World Cup, beating Bulgaria 3-0 before thrashing Turkey 6-0.<\/p>\n
The reigning European champions have kept a clean sheet in each of their last six World Cup qualifiers, their longest run of games without conceding a goal in the competition (since at least 2010).<\/p>\n
Merino, who scored a hat-trick in their win against Turkey, believes Spain have the squad to adapt to the absences of Yamal and Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can win games from the bench. Matches are decided in the final minutes, and you have to do well no matter what you’re playing,\u201d said Merino.<\/p>\n
“[We are taught to] think about the group. [We have] players with a lot of resources and very good one-on-one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will see a recognisable team.\u201d<\/p>\n
De la Fuente received another blow to his squad after concerns over Dani Olmo\u2019s fitness.<\/p>\n
During his press conference, the head coach said: \u201c[Olmo] came in feeling tired and a little uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe trained for 15 minutes and wasn’t feeling comfortable. They’ve run some tests on him, but everyone else is in perfect condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m extremely upset about any player’s injury. We’ll see what happens with Dani, let’s wait for the medical report.\u201d<\/p>\n
De la Fuente was criticised by Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick after Yamal returned to club football with an injury after the September break, but both coaches will be hoping to avoid a similar situation this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re playing for World Cup qualification, we have to win these matches,\u201d added De la Fuente.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorgia is an opponent with very good players, we have to give our all to win. We’re going to go all out for the match.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Merino believes Spanish fans will see a \u201crecognisable team\u201d in their World Cup qualifier against Georgia despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-489136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115351604870958922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}