Koke and Sarabia hit out at Van der Vaart’s comments about Spain

’s

Koke

and

Pablo Sarabia

hit back at

Rafael van der Vaart

for criticizing Spain’s performance by asking him to remember what happened during the 2010 World Cup final.

Van der Vaart slammed La Roja’s play in their last two Euro 2020 games when they were held to a goalless draw by Sweden and drew the battle against Poland as well. They have a chance of getting to the next round by defeating Slovakia.

The ex-midfielder told NOS that La Roja were “horrible” to watch, saying that he would be pleased if the Netherlands were to see them in the knockout stage since "all [Spain] do is pass from one side to the other".

Atletico Madrid’s Koke revealed that Van de Vaart "wants his moment of glory and he's having it" when he pointed out how the former Madrid player performed during the 2010 World Cup final, losing to Spain in the extra-time.

He told

El Partidazo de COPE

:

"I saw him in the World Cup final, and here at Las Rozas we have a photo of Iniesta's goal against the Netherlands with [Van der Vaart] next to him. You have to respect him.

"We're going to keep those words to motivate us a bit. We're not going to hang them up in the dressing room, but we're going to keep them in our memory if we play them."

Sarabia was also not pleased with what Van der Vaart said, insisting that he was "mistaken with his comments", telling

Radio Marca

:

"The only memory I have of that is the 2010 World Cup, in which he didn't come out so well because we won the final.

"We're not experiencing a wholly positive situation. If we had won one of the two games, everything would've been seen differently. What we have to do is to win on Wednesday to forget everything.

"I think we're playing well and we're getting there. We just need the ball to go in. We dominate games, we press well, they create few chances against us... I hope football will reward us and we'll win against Slovakia."

In order to secure their spot in the next round, Spain must beat Slovakia, but a draw will also do should Poland fail to overcome Sweden.

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