COMPETITION IS INTENSE

The Spanish national team manager Vicente del Bosque has said that the competition for places within the Spanish national team is extremely intense.

After winning the last three major trophies in the form of two European championships and one FIFA World Cup, Spain are regarded as the best team in the world by some distance. The manager has attributed the incredible quality within the squad to this enormous success that the team has achieved over the last five years. He has said that it is not only the starting line-up that is extremely good, but also the entire squad and the players yet to be picked for the national team.

The former Real Madrid manager was recently voted as the best coach of the year 2012. Due to the fact that the team has had a lot of success in recent years, there has been a suggestion that del Bosque will not be paying too much attention to the 2013 Confederations cup. The manager has said that he will first be dealing with the short-term objectives that will come in the form of World Cup qualifying matches against France and Finland. Then only they will be focusing on the Confederations cup. Even though he believes that he has a stable squad, there are a number of players on the brink of getting into the national team according to del Bosque.

"Well, we deal with short-term objectives. That being the case, our focus is qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, which we’d like to wrap up as soon as we can. Coming up soon in March we’ve got two games [against Finland and France] that are extremely important for our future prospects and then the Confederations Cup will come in the medium term," said the manager, who has also won numerous trophies in his club career as well.