Cesar Azpilicueta has rubbished any suggestion that Spain gave up against Japan because they knew that Germany would be heading out of the World Cup.
Luis Enrique’s side were heavy favourites to take three points from their final outing in Group E but, despite taking the lead through Alvaro Morata, suffered a shock 2-1 defeat to one of the surprise packages at Qatar 2022. That setback did little damage for Spain, as they still progressed to the last 16 as runners-up in their group and avoided the prospect of going through Brazil in the quarter-finals, but Germany were left cursing their luck as they bowed out after overcoming Costa Rica 4-2 on matchday three.
Chelsea captain Azpilicueta, who was replaced at half-time by Dani Carvajal, has addressed claims that La Roja threw in the towel against Japan, telling reporters: “I was aware in the second half [of the Germany score]; I was on the bench so I was aware of the situation. If they look at our group the last couple of years we always give everything and we go out of the pitch to win every game, to press every ball. We have been punished from just scoring a goal and then conceding straight away so that’s the way we play. We are the first disappointed to not win the game so you can see what happened. It was difficult because it is something that you cannot control, the other game, so the only thing we could do was to try to give confidence and to help our team-mates to win our game. We knew that a draw or a win we would qualify. That’s the only thing we could control.”
