The road to the final four of the Nations League has been complicated for Spain, where it was already in the last edition, losing only in the final against France in a quite controversial match. Switzerland surprised Luis Enrique's men at La Romareda, who on Tuesday are forced to beat Portugal in Braga to seal the pass.
The national team returned to Zaragoza on Saturday, where it had not stopped since 2003. It found a city overturned, the streets of the capital dyed red in the morning by enthusiastic fans eager to enjoy their team. But then, on the green, everyone was hugely disappointed and Switzerland recorded Spain's first home loss since 2018 with two goals from a corner. Serious warning for the World Cup.
The final result that reflected the ancient score of La Romareda, 1-2, allows us to start talking about the curse of Zaragoza if the precedents of the red team in their visits to the Aragonese capital are taken into account.
Since 1929, the date of its first stop that took place in the field of Iberia, Spain has visited Zaragoza six times, although only three of them were official matches. And of those three games, two ended in defeat, both already at the La Romareda stadium.
The first official commitment of the team in Zaragoza took place in 1983, on the way to the European Championship in France'84. The team then led by Miguel Muñoz beat Eire 2-0. It took twenty years for the capital to receive the national team in an official match again. It was in 2003 and Greece, with a goal from Giannakopoulos, began to draw the curse (0-1). Switzerland's victory on Saturday (1-2) was the third official visit of Spain to Zaragoza... and the second defeat, confirming that the idyll with the stands does not translate into good results.
In fact, in the last 31 years the Spanish team has only lost four times at home in official matches and half of them have been in Zaragoza. Curiously, the other two defeats are also concentrated in a single stadium, the Benito Villamarín in Seville. They were against France 1-2 (1991) and against England 2-3 (2018). But the statistics of Spain in the field of Betis are still magnificent in spite of everything, with 12 wins, 1 draw and those two losses, so it is not a place to speak of a curse. For now, that remains for Zaragoza.
