You didn't have to be a campanologist to pick out the distinctive sound beneath the whistling which greeted the close of business in St Etienne last night. Javier Clemente certainly won't be asking for whom the bells were tolling. The Spanish press will tell him this morning. Two games. One point. Javier, we have a problem.

Paraguay came for a draw, almost filched a win and finished the game in high spirits. They haven't blinded anybody with their brilliance at this World Cup yet, but they go into their final game of the group stages with a fair chance of catching their opponents Nigeria on an under-motivated afternoon. That's as much as they could have hoped for.

Javier Clemente's tale is different. The Spanish media have been sticking picadors in his hide all week, but he's still standing and still picking teams which accord to his vision. "They're showing how little they know about football," he said of his domestic hacks before leaving Francisco Morientes out of his team again last night.

For a team ranked second in the world, but facing elimination if they lost last night it was high-wire stuff from Clemente. This morning he finds himself wondering about the quality of his safety net. A tricky last tangle with a stingy Bulgarian side still nestling their own hopes is less than inviting.

Clemente's team, who have been uniformly loyal, played with an adventurous spirit last night but their commendable sense of abandon couldn't disguise the fact that they have problems at the back. Miguel Benitez, the Paraguayan midfielder, ran at the Spaniards from a variety of angles, cutting through their lines several times. Clemente's defence was so slow last night that their positioning was more a matter of Feng Shui than tactics.

Benitez was much the best player on view and he got the game's earliest chance as he linked well with Aristedes Rojas in a neat move which ended in a near wide.

That wasn't the key to Paraguay's moral victory, however.

Stifling defence was. Paraguay have yet to score a goal and yet to concede one here.

Their game with Bulgaria was the worst of the competition thus far, and at times last night they tranquillised a crowd which came for a fiesta in St Etienne with their blanket defending. Not Mexican waving but drowning said the silence from the terraces.

"Paraguay closed up all the avenues," said a downbeat Clemente afterwards. "It's not the most beautiful way to play, but their approach is efficient."

The principal piece of colour from the first half was the sight of Chilavert, the outgoing Paraguayan 'keeper, taking the train uptown to try his luck with a free kick in the 40th minute. His shot came off the wall before Ayala drove it just wide.

The defensive efficiency of the Paraguayans smothered the Spaniards, meanwhile. Their first clearcut chance came in the 24th minute when they needled a way through the Paraguayan lines only for Chilavert to treat Pizzi's header with theatrical disdain.

That set the pattern. Pizzi, the Barcelona veteran who jumped the queue ahead of Morientes for a striker's berth last night, tried a few glory-seeking dribbles through the defence but got comprehensively lost every time. It was no surprise when Clemente relented and swapped Pizzi for Morientes early in the second half. Benitez began the second half as he had finished the first, teasing the Spaniards with glimpses of catastrophe. He nipped down the right wing, cut back inside and fired off a shot which had Zubizarreta reeling backwards from the velocity.

As the game wore on the place became fraught with tension. Hierro hit a free kick from promising territory criminally wide. Benitez drove a twister from 30 yards which tested the full extent of Zubizarreta's rehabilitation since his opening game blackout.

The Paraguayans continued to obey the simple expedient of throwing bodies in front of the ball. A hard working midfield dropped back continuously for the relief work. The result had an inevitability about it long before the end. All down now to the final round.

Second place in the group will pull them a worrying fixture in Lens against the winners of Group C, probably the French. Clemente left the press conference looking like a man stuck between a rock and a hard place, who has just noticed an ominous ticking noise coming from his bag.