Wasteful Torres raps ‘Jabulani’ World Cup ball

Johannesburg: Fernando Torres became the latest player to complain about the Jabulani World Cup ball after the Spain striker fluffed several scoring opportunities in Monday’s 2-0 win over Honduras.

Coach Vicente del Bosque included Torres, who recently completed recovery from knee surgery, in his starting lineup for the Group H clash at Ellis Park and if he had shown his usual lethal touch the dominant European champions could easily have matched Portugal’s earlier 7-0 thrashing of North Korea.

Also See The science behind Jabulani

“Personally speaking, I am very happy to have played but we need to practice a bit more with this Jabulani because we are having a bit of bother with it,” Torres told reporters.

“But whereas the other day we couldn’t score today we got two and we have to be happy that we managed to turn things around,” he added, in reference to Spain’s shock 1-0 defeat to Switzerland in last week’s group opener.

The victory over Honduras put the Spanish bid for a first World Cup back on track and a win against Chile on Friday in their third and final group game would put them in the next round and set up a probable meeting with Brazil or Portugal.

Del Bosque and his players were disappointed not to have netted more goals on Monday, but said getting back to winning ways had lifted the group’s spirits and removed some of the anxiety that crept into the squad after the Swiss game.

“We would have liked a bigger margin of victory but the win is positive for our mood and that’s the route we have to follow,” defender Sergio Ramos told reporters.

“We played a great match against a team that was always going to sit back from the start,” he added.

“Fortunately, we now have our fate in our own hands against Chile and we’ll be going for victory.”