Spain seek Euro 2016 perfection with more direct style

Muscular approach has replaced the possession-based game

Alvaro Morata, scoring against Turkey, has added a cutting edge to Spain

In a tournament of flawed teams, Spain have been the best so far and resume their pursuit of perfection against Croatia in Bordeaux on Tuesday night.

Only Spain and Italy still have a 100 per cent record and it is Vicente del Bosque’s team who have produced the stand-out performance so far in their 3-0 demolition of Turkey in Nice last Friday. They have a settled side playing good football and appear to have a far better balance between possession and penetration than they did when they collapsed at the World Cup in Brazil two years ago.

That team did not make it out of the group stage after bad defeats to Netherlands and Chile. They had gone stale and so had their football. This side, though, has a freshness and a direct style. The old masters who have been here all the way from Euro 2008, David Silva and Andres Iniesta, are still here, and Iniesta has been the outstanding player of the tournament, even now at 32. He is in the form of his life, which is saying something given everything he has achieved over the last 10 years with Spain and Barcelona.

There is a new sharpness to this side too, which owes to Spain’s rediscovery of muscular forward play. Alvaro Morata is leading the line up front, giving them a physical threat that Diego Costa’s hamstrings did not allow him to do two years ago. Nolito, on the left, is not the most accomplished player in the side but provides willing running and a cutting edge.

Andres Iniesta has been in fine form for Spain - again (Getty)

Even with Iniesta, Silva, Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Busquets, this is not a Spain side that seeks to play possession football for its own sake. And yet not everyone is happy with its natural rhythm, its settled balance.

Pedro has not enjoyed an especially good first year in England since leaving Barcelona and when Del Bosque wanted a direct threat out wide he turned to Nolito rather than the man who scored in the 2011 Champions League final. At every tournament there are plenty of players who are frustrated at not playing, but few who voice those concerns as Pedro did over the weekend.

“I had other expectations when I arrived here,” Pedro said, “and it has not been what I wanted. To take this role is very difficult for me, and if you don't see more continuity then you wonder if it is really worth the trouble to keep coming just to be part of the group, to be with my team-mates, even though I'm very comfortable.”

This sounded like a threat not to be part of Spain’s group any more and it went down especially badly at home. Stoke City winger Joselu tweeted that if Pedro did not want to be part of the Spain squad that there were plenty of other players who would.

Vicente del Bosque did not want to make a big thing out of Pedro's comments (Getty)

Spain gave a press conference on Monday before their Croatia game and Pedro, who will of course be on the bench again, made an apology of sorts for his frustrated comments.

”I've spoken to Del Bosque,” he said. "It wasn't an attack on the coach, not at all. If anyone has been offended, I apologise. Vicente and my team-mates see [these comments] as being normal. But I accept that some fans won't have done. In no moment have I said I did not want to be here, that I wanted to go, or that I was uncomfortable here.”

Del Bosque knows that his group is in the right place right now and wanted to make as little of this as possible. “He said something without meaning to, he made public a reality,” he explained. “The other 12 players who are here [and not starting] want to play, nothing else. It is inevitable that in some moments the 12 who do not play are not happy. There is no need for this to go any further.”

Spain are facing a Croatia team who were looking like strong adversaries until their collapse in the final minutes of their last match against the Czech Republic. Their supporters are in protest against their federation and will sabotage the team’s chances if they have to. Croatia have been fined €100,000 (£80,000) by Uefa for those disturbances. There will be no Luka Modric on Tuesday either, and now what could have been the best game of the group stages looks like an easier exercise for the reigning European champions. They do not need any disruption now, there will be bigger tests to come.