International Matches

Spain 3 - Poland 0

Spain easily won their friendly match against Poland in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Cartagena. The 14,000 capacity ground was far too small to accommodate the supporters who wanted to watch the match (over 4,000 turned up to watch one of the training sessions), and tickets were changing hands on the black market for over 30,000 Pesetas. Camacho included five new players in his squad, four of whom, Velasco, Juanmi, Salva and Luis Cembranos, got their first cap, with Romero missing out for the time being. The controversy surrounding the selection of Real Madrid's Raúl and Hierro, depriving manager Del Bosque of their services for the match against Betis on the same day, culminated in a threat from Camacho that he would resign if this happened again. Camacho was fed up with the external pressure on him to leave players out, and gave an ultimatum that if Real Madrid's next game with Valladolid on 22nd February (coinciding with Spain's next match against Croatia) was not rescheduled, they could find someone else to pick the team. Camacho's threat was taken seriously, and the date will probably be changed. Spain dominated the match from start to finish, with Poland only getting in two shots on goal in the whole match. Once again Raúl got his team off to a good start, intercepting a poor pass by the Polish defence in the fifteenth minute and shooting first time from the edge of the area past Majdan. This was Raúl's 16th goal in 30 matches, and at 22 years old he is now only 10 away from all time top scorer Butrugueño. Urzaiz added two goals in a three minute period early in the second half, the first a header from Guardiola's corner and the second on the goal line after Raúl's shot was blocked by the keeper. The league's top scorer Salva came on 22 minutes from the end and had a clear chance to score, but he shot straight at the keeper. Zaragoza's goalkeeper Juanmi, born in Cartagena, got the biggest cheer of the night when he came on late in the game. Barcelona's Guardiola picked up an injury and will probably be out for a couple of weeks.

Teams were as follows:

Spain: Molina (Juanmi, 81'); Velasco, Hierro, Paco, Aranzábal; Valerón (Luis Cembranos, 74'), Guardiola (Engonga, 65'), Luis Enrique, Etxeberria (Mendieta, 46'); Urzaiz (Salva, 68'), Raúl.

Poland: Majdan; Zielininski, Makak, Zajac (Kaliszan, 60'), Zevlakow; Krynowek (Kaczrowski, 70'), Iwan, Michalski, Cerwiek (Baszczynski, 83'), Gilewicz (Bizacki, 74'), Kryszalowicz (Zurawski, 51').

Goals: Raúl, Urzaiz (2).

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