Sports Desk: Spain will look to avoid lapses in concentration, which they experienced against Japan, as Morocco are ready to play another \u201cfinal\u201d to upset the 2010 champions, 36 years after their last appearance at this stage of the World Cup. The Maghreb side advanced top of their group by beating Canada and Belgium, and drawing with Croatia, reaching the last 16 for the first time since 1986. Photo: Facebook
\nSpain will be favourites to beat Morocco in the World Cup last 16 on Tuesday but the teams’ experiences in the group phase were a reminder of the unpredictability of tournament football.<\/p>\n
Spain, who humbled Costa Rica 7-0 in their opening game, finished second in Group E behind Japan while Morocco defied the odds to win Group F ahead of Croatia and Belgium.<\/p>\n
The Spanish lost their last group match to Japan and face a difficult test from a Moroccan side growing in confidence under coach Walid Regragui.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Germany did Spain a favour by beating Costa Rica but Rodri Hernandez admitted those three difficult minutes unnecessarily complicated their own match before they sealed progress to the last 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sports Desk: Spain will look to avoid lapses in concentration, which they experienced against Japan, as Morocco are ready to play another “final” to upset the 2010 champions, 36 years after their last appearance at this stage of the World Cup. The Maghreb side advanced top of their group by beating Canada and Belgium, and drawing with Croatia, reaching the last 16 for the first time since 1986. Photo: Facebook Spain will be favourites to beat Morocco in the World Cup last 16 on Tuesday but the teams’ experiences in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29868,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29866\/revisions\/29868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}