QUARTER-FINAL Paraguay v Spain:If Spain beat Paraguay they will move beyond the quarter-finals of a World Cup for the first time in 60 years.

HAVING described being favourites before the tournament began as “a terrible trap,” it seems just possible now Vicente del Bosque engineered that unlikely defeat by Switzerland in Durban a couple of weeks back to divert some of the world’s attention elsewhere.

If so, the ploy has worked rather nicely, with Spain progressing smoothly while Brazil coped with the limelight, at least until yesterday afternoon.

That opening defeat, their first ever by the Swiss, was only the team’s second in 35 competitive matches and in the four games since they’ve resumed normal service, with David Villa’s four goals sweeping them to victories over Honduras, Chile and, with almost embarrassing ease in Cape Town this week, their one time rivals Portugal.

The team’s success at the European Championships a couple of years ago not only ended their 44-year wait for another major trophy but blew completely away their “underachievers” tag. Tonight they look virtually certain to put another of their statistical embarrassments to bed by beating Paraguay and moving beyond the quarter-finals of a World Cup for the first time in 60 years. To judge by the swagger they have shown in their last three outings, that really shouldn’t be the end of it.

Del Bosque inherited much the same team that won Euro 2008 and after telling the players at his first training session he would change nothing, the 59-year-old has been as good as his word, with just one of the team that started in Vienna two years ago – 33-year-old Marcos Senna – left at home in the wake of a miserable, injury-ravaged season with Villarreal.

The squad here, though, is actually better, significantly better than the one that romped to victory in Austria.

Under del Bosque, Spain became the first country ever to qualify for a World Cup with 10 wins out of 10 in qualifying. And while it wasn’t the toughest of groups, the Spanish still managed to produce a near flawless campaign, with 28 goals scored to just five conceded.

The runaway success wasn’t achieved because their former Real Madrid coach was able to field his strongest team in every game, however. Del Bosque used no fewer than 28 players over the course of the 10 matches and not one featured on every occasion.

Only this week, Manchester City paid almost €30 million to Valencia for David Silva, a midfielder or winger who can’t get into del Bosque’s starting line up. Cesc Fabregas has to be content with a place amongst the substitutes too, kept out of the side here by the coach’s determination to stick with a two striker strategy.

Fernando Torres is that second striker but he, perhaps because of injury, looks utterly out of sorts and has yet to stay on the pitch for a full 90 minutes. No matter, the Spanish can carry him while he recovers his confidence.

If all three are in England after the summer, though, you’ll not be offered much of a return on backing them all to make the Premier League’s Team of the Year. Beyond that some of the names carry a little less weight outside of Spain but the quality, particularly amongst the younger stars, borders on the ridiculous. Pedro is just 22 but, thanks to two good feet, a turbo-charged burst of pace and an unfailing eye for goal, scored precisely that many goals for Barcelona in all competitions during the season just ended.

Valencia’s Juan Manuel Mata is just as young but averaged a goal every three games last season from the left wing, also scoring three in Spain’s qualifiers. Jesus Navas, meanwhile, is a couple of years older and would have been at Chelsea for the last four years had he not got a severe case of the jitters about leaving his home in Seville.

And then there is Sergio Busquets, Senna’s replacement in the holding midfield role, who is just 21, two months older than the squad’s youngest player, Javi Martinez, who is himself already the lynchpin of the Athletic Bilbao squad thanks to his strength, speed, vision and outstanding range of passing.

Martinez was a member of the under-19 European Championship-winning side in 2007 but then it would be far more noteworthy if he hadn’t been on a major Uefa or Fifa tournament-winning side. The Spanish have won 19 since 1988.

The conveyor belt of talent, needless to say, is not an accident. Just as they have done in tennis, the Spanish are benefiting from a far sighted policy of coach education and youth development that has been overseen by the association, run by the clubs and funded in no small part by various levels of government.

Some 15,000 coaches have been brought up to Uefa Pro A Licence standard, twice as many as their nearest rivals in Europe, Germany, eight, and 10 times as many as Italy and England respectively.

Barcelona, of course, have spearheaded the development programme at the famed La Masia but just about every club in La Liga plays its part and even the inflated fees Real Madrid pay to others for their best youngsters help to grease the wheels.

With Brazil gone and comfortably the easier of the semi-finals to come as long as they can negotiate their way past Paraguay this evening, the immediate future looks bright for del Bosque and his boys.

With 10 of their squad at this World Cup aged 24 or less, and fresh talent emerging all the time, the longer term future looks brighter still.