Spain fin­ished top of Group C in the Fi­fa Un­der-17 Women's World Cup with a 2-1 win over Venezuela at the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, yes­ter­day. It was the Eu­ro­pean cham­pi­ons' sternest test so far af­ter beat­ing Japan 4-1 and New Zealand 3-0. Spain coach Jorge Vil­da shuf­fled his pack ahead of the con­test, no­tably leav­ing out the im­pres­sive Sara Meri­da. Venezuela, for their part, had all their starters on the pitch in what was a must-win game for them.

The first half was slow, with both sides swel­ter­ing in the heat. The Spaniards dom­i­nat­ed pos­ses­sion with the South Amer­i­can hope­fuls try­ing to free their livewire strik­er Ysaura Vi­so on the break. How­ev­er, the two-goal hero­ine from the open­er with New Zealand, was iso­lat­ed for large por­tions of the open­ing pe­ri­od and wasn't able to muster much in the way of scor­ing chances with the no­table ex­cep­tion of a fierce vol­ley af­ter 17 min­utes. The Spaniards were mov­ing the ball around with panache, but they looked lethar­gic in front of goal.

Cap­tain Aman­da Sampe­dro took a pair of shots, first in the 20th and then in the 26th minute, but both flew well wide of the goal. They fi­nal­ly got it right in the 28th minute when Palo­ma L�zaro got on the end of her own re­bound and placed the ball home for a 1-0 lead. There were to be no more goals in the half, but Spain were in the as­cen­dan­cy with Sampe­dro and L�zaro look­ing dan­ger­ous out left and Lau­ra Gutier­rez near­ly scor­ing with a head­er sec­onds from the break. Venezuela had a few chances of note, the most dan­ger­ous be­ing Joe­mar Guare­cu­co's vol­ley in the 52nd minute and her fol­low-up long-range dri­ve in the 57th, but both went over the bar.

In the 74th minute the South Amer­i­cans fi­nal­ly man­aged to get an equalis­er, as Spain looked to be tir­ing in the heat. Vi­so crossed for An­na Al­vara­do, who slammed home from around the penal­ty spot. The shock sent Span­ish bod­ies for­ward in­to at­tack, and they fin­ished off the con­test sev­en min­utes from time when Lazaro slipped in­to the box com­plete­ly un­marked and slammed home a fine pass from Gema Gili to make the fi­nal score 2-1. Spain now move on­to the quar­ter-fi­nals with a per­fect nine points from their three games, while Venezuela–af­ter be­gin­ning their fi­nals so promis­ing­ly–are head­ing for home.