Spanish newspapers and football fans yesterday mourned the end of an era for their national team after the world and European champions crashed out of the World Cup in a humiliating 2-0 beating by Chile.
Photographs of midfielder Andres Iniesta with his head in his hands made the front pages of the press, sharing the space in some cases with coverage of the swearing in of Spain’s new king, Felipe VI.
“The end... A terrible end to the most glorious era”, ran the headline in leading Madrid sports daily Marca. “Goodbye to the golden years.”
Marca commentator Santiago Segurola called it “the end of an excellent generation and the start of a new era”.
He blamed Spain’s failure to score or stop Chile on “big mistakes and a sense of brokenness, of exhaustion”.
“A monumental challenge awaits their successors. They will have to restore the prestige suddenly lost by Spain.”
Marca analyst Angel Lara said the defending champions’ World Cup exit in the first stage marked the end of the international careers of heroes of the Spain’s squad of recent years such as Xavi Hernandez, top scorer David Villa, Fernando Torres and Xabi Alonso.
Veteran goal keeper Iker Casillas, who apologised to fans after a string of mistakes in Spain’s losses to Chile and on June 13 to the Netherlands, had not planned to leave the squad after this World Cup, but may now do so, Lara added.
“It was beautiful while it lasted,” ran the headline on another sporting daily, AS.
AS printed photographs recalling Spain’s past three triumphs: the 2008 and 2012 Euro championships and the 2010 World Cup.
“Don’t apologise,” it said. “We owe you a lot.”
“The end was horrible,” wrote AS commentator Juanma Trueba, who said Spain’s failure was directly linked to the flagging fortunes in recent seasons of Barcelona.
That club’s players and quickfire “tiki taka” passing style have strongly influenced the national squad.
“It had to happen some day, that was understood, but we never imagined a farewell so pitiful, with a team so unrecognisable and vulgar,” Trueba wrote.
“We were supposed to be the best, the champions of the world,” said another fan, Juan Tamayo, after watching the match “They have humiliated us as a country.”
