Spain looked inches away from winning the FIFA under-17 World Cup at the Vivekanada Yuba Bharati Krirangan on Saturday after taking a two-goal lead within the first half hour of the big Final. But the English wingers had other plans as they slammed 5 goals in the remaining one hour to take home the silverware.
la Rojita did come with a plan to block England's attacking assault on the wings but the English flank players — Phillip Foden (right winger), Callum Hudson-Odoi (left winger), Steven Sessegnon (right back) were too hot to handle on the night.
"We knew they (England) are very threatening on the wings," said Spain coach Santiago Denia. "We made a plan for that as midfielders were asked to help our fullbacks. The idea was to give them no independence on the flanks but they were just unstoppable tonight, especially on the left flank."
The plan to hold the wingers through double marking of flanks did work for the first 38 minutes. However, tactical change by Steve Cooper, allowing more freedom to fullback Sessegnon in attack, took Denia by surprise.
"Our plan was working fine as we were leading comfortably but they tweaked their tactics on the wings as they attacked through width (through fullbacks) and cut-in (through wingers). That really made things difficult for us to attack after that and we lost control of the game," said the Spain coach.
The flurry of crosses by the right back soon paid a dividend, as he assisted two goals — to Rhian Brewster and Morgan Gibbs-White leading to the equaliser by 58th minute.
Oozing with confidence, Young lions didn't stop there and the courtesy of key passes exchanged flanks.
Hudson-Odoi was a terror for the boys in red from the beginning of the match. The Chelsea academy winger, despite his trickery, pace, and skills, couldn't find end product to his mazy runs. But showcasing special talent, it was hard to keep such a threat at bay for long. Catching Spain on a counter, left-back Juan Miranda being out of position, Hudson-Odoi was too fast for midfielder Mohamed Moukhliss to deal with. The winger was soon inside the box and squared the ball to golden ball winner Foden, who tucked the ball in for the decisive goal.
There was no stopping Hudson-Odoi after that. As Denia made two swift changes to the lineup to go more offensive for an equaliser, the English wingers went all guns blazing into the weakened Spanish defence for an anti-climax goal.
Hudson-odoi racked up two more assists within next twenty minutes to complete a unique hattrick of assists — providing crosses to Marc Guehi and Foden again.
"We still had chances to get back in the game after 3-2. We even had chances to make it 3-3 but England took advantage of the space left behind.
And the moment they scored the fourth goal. The game was over for us. Our boys lost hope."
Role-reversal
Spanish football and ball possession are widely considered synonyms to each other. To deal with the physicality of other European sides, the red fury adopted the ball-keeping style through short-passing.
The style was tailor-made for their diminutive-figured but technically-gifted footballers as they won one international title after another.
On Saturday night, la Rojita was given taste of their own medicine as England took complete control of the game and forced their counterparts to defend in numbers to deal with the waves of attack.
"We defeated Spain playing the way we wanted," said English coach Cooper. This is how we want to play football, England team will typify that. This is doing our thing our way."
England's performance in the final didn't surprise many as they bullied all their opponents, small or big, in this competition. It started with 3-1 demolition of dark horses the United States of America in Quarter-final.
And the trend continued with flattening of crowd favourites Brazil in the semi-final.
But the best performance was saved for last night for the mega finals.
A fitting win that allowed them perfect revenge of Euro under-17 final loss six months back against the same Spanish squad. With this thrilling win, English players have raised a lot of expectations and speculations about their future.
But nobody can say for sure that these boys will be playing in the senior teams tomorrow.
Still, they made this World Cup special for the Indians, as they showcased premium attacking football.