Spain boss Luis Enrique is confident that his side will overcome Morocco providing that they stick to the gameplan that has been set out.

La Roja - world champions in 2010 - will be aiming to reach the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup when they take on the African side on Tuesday.

Spain will enter the contest off the back of a 2-1 defeat to Japan in their final group match, and the national side have only scored twice in their last two games after hitting seven against Costa Rica in their section opener.

Enrique has said that his side have only had "ten bad minutes" at the tournament, when they conceded twice in the early stages of the second half against Japan.

"We had ten bad minutes, yes. Ten out of 270. You always look at the bad. If I stick with the performance in this World Cup, we are [at a] remarkably high [level] except for 10 minutes," Enrique told reporters.

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"We are not going to change the idea. But that does not mean that we have to dominate the 90 minutes, because we play against high-level teams, players and coaches. We do not play alone. And we play against Morocco, which is a great team.

"We are going to play the same, we are not going to change. I am zero worried about the result. I am worried that the team will do things well. If we do things well, the normal thing is to win."

Enrique has also said that his side have been preparing for possible penalties in the competition, having been knocked out by Italy in the semi-finals of Euro 2020 on spot kicks.

"I imagine that they have done their homework," Enrique added. "Over a year ago, in one of the Spain camps, I told them they had to get here with at least 1,000 penalties taken.

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"If you wait until getting here to practise penalties... [it won't be enough]. It's a moment of maximum tension, a time to show your nerve and that you can shoot the penalty in the way you have decided, if you have trained it a thousand times.

"It says a lot about each player. It's trainable, manageable, how you manage the tension. It's increasingly less luck - the goalkeepers have more influence.

"We have a very good goalkeeper, any of the three can do very well in this situation. Every time we finish training, I see a lot of players taking penalties."

Spain were world champions in 2010, but they have disappointed in their last two World Cups, being eliminated in the group stage in 2014 before being knocked out in the round of 16 four years ago in Russia.

Written by
Matt Law