{"id":45344,"date":"2017-09-29T12:30:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T12:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=45344"},"modified":"2017-09-29T12:30:06","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T12:30:06","slug":"spain-drops-david-villa-for-final-world-cup-qualifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/sports\/spain-drops-david-villa-for-final-world-cup-qualifiers.html","title":{"rendered":"Spain drops David Villa for final World Cup qualifiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Spain drops David Villa for final World Cup qualifiers<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Spain drops David Villa for final World Cup qualifiers:- Veteran striker David Villa was dropped by Spain on Friday for its last World Cup qualifiers against Albania and Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Coach Julen Lopetegui recalled the 35-year-old Villa last month after a three-year absence from the national side. But the New York City striker played only the final minutes of a 3-0 win over Italy before he was sidelined by a muscle injury during training. That meant he missed Spain&#8217;s 8-0 rout of Lichtenstein.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">&#8220;Villa has been slowed down by the injury and he doesn&#8217;t have the pace he had before. That&#8217;s the only reason (he was dropped),&#8221; Lopetegui said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Lopetegui recalled Real Sociedad midfielder Asier Illarramendi, Valencia forward Rodrigo Moreno, and Napoli forward Jose Callejon to his squad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Spain leads Europe Group G with 22 points after winning seven and drawing one of its eight qualifiers. Italy is next with 19 points. Albania is third with 13, followed by Israel with nine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Spain hosts Albania on Oct. 6 and visits Israel three days later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">The group winner qualifies for the tournament in Russia next summer. The second-place finisher must hope to go through a playoff<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/soccer\/2017\/09\/29\/spain-drops-david-villa-for-final-world-cup-qualifiers\/106109416\/<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/sports\/spain-drops-david-villa-for-final-world-cup-qualifiers.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spain drops David Villa for final World Cup qualifiers Spain drops David Villa for final World Cup qualifiers:- Veteran striker David Villa was dropped by Spain on Friday for its last World Cup qualifiers against Albania and Israel. Coach Julen Lopetegui recalled the 35-year-old Villa last month after a three-year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[9324,17255,11903,17254,67614,12636],"class_list":["post-45344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-latest-sports-news","tag-mlb-scores","tag-nba-scores","tag-nfl-scores","tag-spain-drops-david-villa-for-final-world-cup-qualifiers","tag-sports-scores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}