A great victory, a huge performance, the 100th goal (and six on top of that) and top of the group leaderboard. Nothing more could be asked for Spain’s debut in the World Cup, which not only broke a series of three winless debuts, but also gave a complete football festival to the World Cup’s massive audience. One of the favorites delivered an impeccable opening card with the seven-goal win over Costa Rica that marked Luis Enrique’s team in history: it is the biggest victory of all time, surpassing the 6-1 win over Bulgaria in 1998.
More red than ever because of the full uniform of the same color required by FIFA, Spain transferred the chromatic intensity to the green turf making Costa Rica pale, scoring a goal with an exact cadence (minute 11, 21 and 31) to settle the match promptly and then color it with four more goals. The downside was that the Al Thumama stadium was not full. King Felipe VI did take his seat in the box to lend his support to the national team on an exceptional afternoon for the Spanish team.
That minimal, brief effort required by the duel provided another benefit: saving strength for the clash against Germany on Sunday (8pm), who will be more furious than ever after losing the points they had taken for granted against Japan. As will Argentina against Saudi Arabia. With the same result and after having taken an early lead, they suffered an equally embarrassing defeat.
A broken World Cup tradition
Five Barça players appeared in Spain’s first line-up, following a tradition of recent years: five in the debut in South Africa, five in Brazil and four in Russia. The trend of results seemed correlated to that azulgrana notoriety for the incredulous and superstitious, as they lost in the 2010 opener (0-1 with Switzerland) and 2014 (1-5 with the Netherlands) and drew in the last (3-3 with Portugal) as a lesser evil.
Pure chance. Perhaps there were other reasons. Alba, Busquets, Gavi, Pedri and Ferran gave cohesion to the team and marked their style, which fits with Luis Enrique’s offering because it comes from the same origin.
Azulgrana’s influence
The key intervention in the victory was irrefutable. Pedri gave two sweets to Olmo and Asensio to practice a couple of shots before scoring, in that order, one from a pass from Gavi and the other from Alba, the victim of the penalty that Ferran Torres converted. The ease of the scoreboard facilitated the icing on the cake with the debut of Alejandro Balde. Eric and Ansu watched from the bench.
The speed of the ball was devastating for the Costa Ricans, just as the rapid pressure of the Spaniards caused them constant losses of ball before even crossing the boundary of the field. None of them were used to such liveliness. They play at a different pace, militants of lower level teams.
Olmo scores Spain’s 100th goal
Only Keylor Navas had an elite affiliation, Paris Saint Germain, and he is the goalkeeper and substitute. Unai Simon was not in any photo. He was dressed in black, for those who did not catch the fleeting moments in which he appeared on television. As fleeting as it was minimal was the show of support for the series of protests against Qatar. Campbell knelt down, but got up immediately when he saw that no one followed him.
Olmo had the honor of putting his name on the 100th Spanish World Cup goal. He started scoring from scratch. He was one of the seven debutants in the line-up. No member of the squad had scored before. Not even Busquets, who played the fourth, nor Alba, the third, something logical for playing in defensive positions. In Russia, Diego Costa (three), Nacho, Isco and Iago Aspas scored, all of them absent. No one will knock David Villa off his throne, the outstanding leader with nine goals, unless Spain decides to go on a show tour and achieves its goal of playing seven games if it reaches the World Cup semifinal.
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