Pain for Spain as Puyol to miss finals

Spain’s Euro 2012 preparations suffered a further major blow yesterday when key defender Carles Puyol was ruled out with a knee injury, while first-choice forward David Villa may not recover in time to make the squad.

Tournament favourites Spain will now likely be without at least two of their most important players when they meet Ireland in Gdansk on Jun 14 in both teams’ second Group C clash.

Puyol injured his right knee in Barcelona’s 4-0 win over Espanyol last Saturday and needs an operation and six weeks to recover. Spain coach Vicente del Bosque yesterday accepted that the 98-cap defender was now out of his plans.