Villarreal internationals: update

Jonathan dos Santos was busy, playing 90 minutes for Mexico on Thursday and then almost 90 minutes today in the Mexico-USA match. Have to say that playing him with Herrera in the middle of the Mexican midfield didn’t work that well against the US—yes, Jona played a role in retaining possession but he wasn’t that creative when he had the ball, not nearly as much as he is for Villarreal on the wing.

Ex-Villarreal man Javier Aquino came on as a sub—good to see him again. Gio dos Santos was on the bench.

Cedric Bakambu scored twice as DR Congo defeated Congo 3-1 in an African Group of Nations qualifier. (For reasons that escape me, qualifying in the group stage for this competition now takes a break until March 2018!)

Antonio Rukavina played on the right side of midfield for Serbia in their 1-1 draw with Wales.

Eres Ünal did not play in Turkey’s 4-1 win over Kosovo.

Finally, our Juvenil A squad lost 2-0 to Real Madrid in the first leg of their cup semifinal. Managing Madrid (fellow SBN blog) has a story about it here—you can see the goals, and since I did not see the match I can’t criticize their assessment. Madrid has always been our bogey team and yes, their Juvenil team is stacked. The second leg is at Vila-real and we will be hoping to turn the tables!