Open letter from Balague to Marcotti: Why my Spain will beat your Italy

Dear Gab,

It sounds like you have not been in Spain lately (the Canary Islands don’t count). You talk about old fears but I can only feel confidence from most people I talk to. Wouldn’t it be that your intimidating words hide new found apprehensions? It was not in our papers where this opinion poll was published a couple of days ago, but in Il corriere della sera: 90.8 per cent of Italians think that you are going home after Sunday’s game. I wonder if, parallel to the envy you seem to have for everything Spanish, there is the general tacit recognition that in football we are now also a step ahead of you. Even La Repubblica correspondent in Madrid coincides with your perception that we have improved as a nation at all levels: “Spain was for a long time the poor relation.

But there is no doubt they have bypassed us in all areas. Anything they do they do it better”, was quoted yesterday. Statistics show that we produce better chefs, better opera singers, the more popular holiday destinations, that we manage with less public debt, that economically we are growing faster than you, that we read more books. Wouldn’t it be that you also secretly admire what we can do with the ball and our new confident attitude?

It is true that we have not got Italy’s winning mentality, essential to create continuous generations of champions. We have discussed it many times -David Silva, great with the ball but probably lacking in ambition, would have not progressed to the Italian national team. You have to be mentally strong, overcome the hurdles and compete hard to be favourably compared with the previous successful generation. I would even argue that this has more to do with our underachieving than the supposed lack of national feeling. It is not the fact that Catalans play with Basques and Castilians that makes the side weaker, but the lack of winning culture. After all, yourselves are also a nation of nations -a young country of only 147 years which can be described as a collection of city states in which it survives, in the north, the separatist notion that from Rome down, it is not longer Italy, it’s Africa.

Historically we have not had that mentality, we have not won four world cups and in fact, I wish we were able to learn more from you. Fabio Capello wins two leagues with Real Madrid in two different periods and in his only two seasons at the club and we keep treating him as if he is a kind of clown because he prioritises results ahead of style. If we had learnt Capello’s lessons about what to do without the ball, about set pieces, about the importance of defending and pressure, about competing, we would have got to this stage much earlier.

Because, my dear friend, we have finally reached that mixture of experience and ability that takes you to new levels and Sunday will be the living proof of it. To our usual wonderful passing in the midfield we have added direct football (in the first two games, five of the six goals were on the counter). As well as our historical weakness at the back, we have now one of the best goalkeeper in the world and a striker who has hit form at the right time. David Villa is, in fact, a Martian. Even if you thought that most of our players have got the Spanish cocktail of inferiority complex and mental failings, we now play with someone who belongs to another planet -Villa doesn’t understand about recreating himself in the laurels after scoring one or two goals, he wants the third (Russia); he doesn’t want to hear about a draw with Sweden being a good result and appears at the end of the game to beat them. We have never had a player like that.

There are more football reasons to feel convinced of what will happen on Sunday -Panucci and Chiellini against Villa and Torres for instance, or Perrota, Cassano or Del Piero being your offensive threat. Or even the fact that Luca Toni has not scored a goal yet, while our two strikers have got five already. Luck has also been in our side (Russia hitting the post, Ibrahimovic injury) and the atmosphere in the squad has been superb.

Few days back, Pepe Reina and his parents had dinner with David Villa and his parents, and Fernando Torres and his parents. This is like a school reunion and you know how important that feeling is to reach your targets as two years ago you showed.

Fear? Just read the text of two of our most important players after I asked them if there is any residue of the old impression that we go into these games scared. “Nobody feels anything but confidence here. We can and we will go through” said one. “This time we are going to kick them out”, texted back the other. Are you listening, Gab?

GUILLEM BALAGUE