Spain beat African champions Egypt 2-0 at the Estadio Manuel Martinez Valero, Elche, Spain on Saturday. Goals from Real Madrid’s Raul and Arsenal’s Jose Antonio Reyes gave the Furia Roja victory, but it was far from plain sailing in their penultimate warm-up match before the finals.

Egypt showed their quality in winning the African Nations Cup earlier in the year and they had several chances during this game with Abdelzaher El Saqqa and Ahmed Moslem both missing good opportunities. On the left wing Wanhad caused constant problems for the Spanish defence.

Raul put Spain in front after 14 minutes with a classic poacher’s strike, latching onto a fumbled save from Essam Al Hadari, he fired home from close range, but Spain couldn’t completely dominate their opponents, and from then until Reyes’ blistering strike after 57 minutes, the game ebbed and flowed.

Raul was the only change to the starting line-up that Spanish coach Luis Aragones made since playing Russia a week-ago, and the Real Madrid star didn’t let him down, making an impressive contribution. Spain, who are now unbeaten in 21 games, drew 0-0 against Russia and complete their World Cup warm-up against fellow qualifiers Croatia in Geneva next Wednesday.

Spain’s World Cup campaign begins against Ukraine in Leipzig on June 14, followed by matches against Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, their other Group H adversaries.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati