Villa would come back for the world cup and Jordi Alba was just plain awesome. The bigger concern for me would be how to replace Xavi who would be 34 by the time of the world cup.
Stats are important to Football, but pure data is useless to sport in general without a way of applying the data. Interesting is how the data is applied more than anything else. Can comparisons across time be drawn to teams across era's to statistically determine who the best team of all time are?
Anyway the first 15 minutes of the Euro final were mesmerizing by Iniesta. When the game was still a contest, He and Xavi were lethal.