Fernando Morientes National Team Career Fernando Morientes National Team Performance
Morientes has been a steady and reliable member of the Spanish national team since 1998, playing for his country for ten years and is now the fourth best scorer in Spain's history, with a total of 27 goals in 47 matches for the national team. Ahead of him are latecomer David Villa, close friend Raul and former Real Madrid captain Yero, whose goals-per-game average is higher than the latter two. Morientes made his international debut on March 25 against Sweden, where he scored twice in five minutes and beat them 4-0. He scored twice in five minutes against Sweden in a 4:0 win, and then scored once in each of the next two matches against Northern Ireland and Bulgaria.
In the millennium, Morientes was unexpectedly left out of the Belgian and Dutch European Championships by Camacho, causing an uproar in the Spanish local sports media; four years later he scored one of Spain's only two goals at the tournament in neighboring Portugal.
Morientes has played in two FIFA World Cup final weeks and has scored five goals, two in Bulgaria in 1998 and three in 2002 when Japan and South Korea hosted the tournament, when he teamed up with clubmate Raúl on the front line, and both had enjoyable games in the tournament. Morientes scored against Paraguay and Ireland to help his side progress to the knockout stages. However, the last eight clash with hosts South Korea was marred by a whistleblowing controversy when a goal kick by a South Korean defender was disallowed by the referee in regulation time, while Morientes' one-touch shot that rebounded off the post was unjustifiably penalized for offside. The situation became even more apparent in extra time, when Spanish right wing Joaquín Sánchez sent in a cross from the right-hand side of the pitch, which Morientes met with a header, but the referee claimed that the ball had gone out of bounds before the goal was disallowed, even though the replay on the big screen clearly showed that Joaquín Sánchez had stopped the ball on the white line. Spain lost the 12-yard battle, and Morientes' final World Cup campaign came to an end.
Morientes also played for his country in a series of outings that lasted a full year before the World Cup in Germany. Unfortunately, due to his low standard at Liverpool at that time and the tactical changes in the national team (from the traditional 4-4-2 formation that relied on breakthroughs on the wings, to the 4-3-3 formation that had the advantage of short passes and quick coordination), Wisdom Aragonés did not select him further from the 31-player list to enter the official 23-player squad, and this time the response from the outside world to his omission was far less strong than in 2000. The response to Morientes' omission has been far less strong than it was in 2000, when he was named in the official 23-man squad.
On March 24, 2007, Morientes scored his 27th goal for the national team against Denmark in the qualifying group; four days later, he avoided another qualifying match against Iceland due to injury and has not received a call-up since. Four days later, he avoided another qualifying match against Iceland due to injury, and has not received a call-up to the national team since.
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