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Friendly international

Spain 3 - Chile 2

Spain came back from two goals down to beat Chile 3-2 in a less-than-friendly international, which took place in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Isla and Vargas put the South Americans two up within twenty minutes, Del Bosque's experimental defence, with Javi Martínez in the back four, leaving a lot to be desired. Second half substitutes Iniesta and Fàbregas inspired a comeback though, the former picking up Xavi's short pass to pull one back ten minutes after the restart, and the latter running on to Iniesta's through ball to level the scores later in the second half. Chile were left with ten men when Contreras was sent off for a tackle from behind on Cazorla, and with the game coming to an end, Swiss referee Laperriere further upset Claudio Borghi and his men when he awarded a dubious penalty after Arbeloa fell under a challenge from Menenses, Valdivia being shown a red card for insulting the officials from the bench. When the protests died down, Bravo pushed Fàbregas's spot kick on to the post, the rebound coming back to the Barcelona midfielder for him to play it back in to the net. That sparked off an unsavoury brawl between the teams, in which the only saving grace for Spain was the sight of Barcelona and Real Madrid players defending each other like brothers after so much animosity between the two sides recently. The referee called it a day at that, a difficult game but at least nobody was hurt in the end. (02.09.11)