Villa wants Spain to get rid of favourites tag

Published>Fri, Jun 04 10 07:28 PM

Johannesburg, June 4 (IANS) Spanish striker David Villa feels the Euro champions will not have any extra advantage of being the favourites to win the football World Cup in South Africa.

Spain are in group H with Switzerland, Honduras and Chile and the three teams have never beaten the Spaniards.

Villa, however, doesn't want to take any chances and said it would be mistake to think too much into the fact.

'I sincerely think that it would be a mistake and we have to get that idea out of our heads. We have to think that all the teams that make it to the World Cup have a chance to achieve important things. Therefore, those three teams are going to make it very difficult for us,' said Villa, who was the top scorer in Euro 2008.

'If we think it is going to be easy then that's when it is going to get complicated. In the Spanish national team, both footballers and technical staff know very well that none of the three games is going to be easy so we are going to prepare each game properly in order to progress to the next stage,' he said.

Asked if Spain are favourites to win the World Cup, Villa said: 'Sincerely, we think that for the fans, for everybody, both Spanish and foreigners, the truth is that Spain's latest results, especially in the last three years, make it a favourite. But we sincerely think that the favourite teams do not have any advantage over the non-favourite teams, whatever they say. At the end of the day, we do not want to be favourites but to reach the final, so to be considered favourites we take it as a compliment, but that's it. We want to work each day so that we can reach the final.'

Villa picked by Chile, who could make it difficult for Spain.

'We have played against them and I think they have a very compact, very competitive squad and I think the three of them are going to make things very difficult for us,' he said.

Villa said that Spain doesn't want to stop after their European triumph in Vienna.

'We have had a very good generation of footballers and we have been a bit lucky, we have worked well the last few years and because at the end of the day things just happen the way the do, don't they? We have a good generation trying to win everything and we hope that Vienna was not our last triumph but that we can keep on winning for years to come,' he said.

The Barcelona striker also feels that England have the right mix to make the final.

'The fact is they have always had good teams and they have found it difficult in the big competitions. I think they have a perfect generation to make it to the final, and they will surely be one of the teams to beat,' he said.

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