“I just didn’t realise he was that good. I couldn’t get near him, every time I tried to get close he passed the ball on.”

That was West Brom midfielder James Morrison’s experience playing against Xavier Hernández i Creus – Xavi to you, me and the rest of the football planet – who is just one of the mesmerising talents preparing to face England at Wembley on Saturday.

Normally, England go into their home internationals top of the bill and expected to deliver a rousing performance.

But every so often opposition comes along commanding the respect – and probably no small trepidation – from football’s top nation and so it is this weekend.

One day, this Spanish team will be talked about in the revered tones reserved for those other luminous teams whose ground-breaking football captured the world’s admiration.

The mighty Magyars, the 1970 Brazilians, the Real Madrid of Puskas and Di Stefano, Holland’s total football or the Kaiser’s imperious Germans.

The reigning world and European champions are currently the greatest and who knows? They may even top the lot.

So what is it like to be out there eyeball-to-eyeball with such luminous, even scary opponents. What is it like to try to shackle them?

Although England’s best club teams have failed to find a way to chain down Spain’s domestic alter ego, Barcelona, this is our first opportunity on home soil against the Spanish national team since their rise to prominence on the global stage.

And two Black Country Scots have got an idea what’s awaiting Fabio Capello’s team after their nation’s final Euro 2012 qualifier in Alicante last month.

Morrison’s words will be particularly sobering for the midfielders who will be facing the daunting challenge of trying to disturb the rhythm of Spain’s possession between the two penalty areas.

He said: “In all my Premier League games, I have never come up against anybody as good as Xavi.

“Normally you might try to get an arm up, get close, but it just didn’t matter. I couldn’t get near him.

“The only consolation is that it was a fantastic experience.”

While Morrison was chasing shadows further up the pitch that night, Wolves defender Christophe Berra was trying to cope with the final thrusts of the Spanish approaches.

Berra said: “You can watch them play on TV but when you play against them, it opens your mind to a different way of playing football.

“It teaches you that it’s not just about being 6ft 2ins tall, strong and athletic, which is what a lot of Premier League teams are about.

“Spain have a front five or six players who are all really small, but agile and fast with good technical skills.”

What did that tell Berra about the state of our famed but flawed Premier League?

He said: “Ours is definitely the most exciting league in the world, because it’s end-to-end and it keeps the fans excited, but it’s not the best technically.

“Don’t get me wrong, English teams are always in the last few of the Champions League, but there are a lot of foreign players playing for those clubs from our league.

“That’s why teams like England aren’t in the running for the major competitions, because keeping the ball is so important at the very highest level.

“You still have to defend at times, but when your forward players are that good with the ball, like Spain, you don’t defend as much.”

What the Spanish have done – and this will perhaps be the enduring legacy of their wonderful football – is obliterate the Premier League’s obsession with power.

This has not just been an English-fuelled development. The move towards 6ft-plus midfield power-players was pioneered and championed by Arsene Wenger.

But even the great French coach never saw what was coming from further south of his homeland.

Berra said: “They are still all fast, strong and powerful, but they have such a low centre of gravity that you can’t just knock them off the ball.

“They’re also so technically gifted that they can play really good football. I think some countries will go down the road Spain have taken.

“It won’t happen in two or three years, it will be 10 to 15 years before we see it happen because they have got to bring a whole new lot of youth players through the system.

“It won’t always be about having big, powerful players because in the long run, it’s all about keeping the ball and putting the it in the net and I think that’s a positive change.”

By Martin Swain

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