The day after Spain's shock 1-0 defeat by Switzerland the Spanish press contained a mixture of gloom about the team's performance and wounded resentment at the perceived failings of the referee, Howard Webb.
Marca noted sombrely: "Spain can no longer indulge the fantasy of choosing their last-16 opponent. Now it is merely an exercise in survival."
The sports daily's main headline quoted Luis Aragonés: "Spain played without conviction", and the former national manager's criticisms were extensively detailed in all newspapers.
Calling the defeat "a heavy blow", Aragonés said the Spanish team lacked speed in their work off the ball and were slow to find space. "They lacked conviction to go for the victory and I perhaps would have used only one defensive midfielder" instead of the combination of Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets.
Asked if Vicente del Bosque had been slow to make changes when things were not going well, Aragonés replied: "It could be that he made [the substitutions] late but I don't think it was a problem of substitutions but of the mentality of the team, which came out slowly, not with determination and paid for it."
The goalkeeper Iker Casillas reflected the shock of the team. "Nobody expected this result," he said. "The dressing room is sad, dissatisfied and down, but you always have to pick out the positives for the next game."
The centre-back Gerard Piqué hinted that the pre-tournament hype surrounding the squad had not helped. "From now on we can forget about the stupid idea that we are favourites and that we are going to win the World Cup easily," he said.
Elsewhere the press were united in claiming the Swiss winner was offside. This was just one of the complaints laid at the door of the English referee Howard Webb. AS felt he should have sent off Switzerland's Stéphane Grichting for a foul on Andrés Iniesta when he was the last defender.
Awarding Webb three out of 10, Marca said: "He wasn't up to the circumstances. Didn't see the offside for the goal and should have given a penalty on [David] Silva in the second half."
But the commentators declined to use controversy about the referee as an excuse. In El País Ramon Besa accused the team of overelaboration, calling them "excessively baroque". He criticised Busquets and the central defensive pairing of Piqué and Carles Puyol of failing to deal with a simple punt from the keeper for the goal, noting that the three had failed in similar circumstances for their club, Barcelona. The strikers were also lambasted for their failure to take clear chances. In a player by player breakdown of the "surprisingly vulnerable" Spain team, only the substitutes Jesús Navas, who put in 19 crosses in his time on the field, and Pedro Rodríguez escaped censure.
His colleague José Samano said that the team had treated possession as an end in itself but cautioned against "inflaming the old Spanish fatalism, which already seems to have been unearthed". The team should not abandon its principles against Honduras and Chile.
It was left to AS to strike a more positive note. "We can still do it," ran the headline, but elsewhere it was noted that no World Cup winners had ever lost their first match.
