Spain were deserved 7-0 winners against Costa Rica in a match that highlighted the sheer gulf in class between the two sides.
Dani Olmo opened the scoring in the 11th minute. Just 10 minutes later Spain managed to do what neither Argentina or Germany were able to and scored a second via a controlled first-time shot from Marco Asensio.
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Ferran Torres converted a penalty to make it 3-0 at half-time, before claiming his second in the 54th minute. Gavi scored arguably the goal of the tournament so far to make it five, and Carlos Soler made it six.
Just as eight minutes were announced as second-half injury time, Alvaro Morata steered home a seventh.
Dermot Corrigan, Carl Anka and Ahmed Walid analyse the key talking points.
Pedri the midfield metronome
From the opening moments of the game, it was clear that Spain were going to play at Pedri’s rhythm, and the 19-year-old showed why he is already one of the best creative midfielders on the globe.
Pedri has not been having a vintage club season by his own super high standards, getting caught amid all the noise and muddle at Barcelona. He has also had many fitness issues since his fantastic and fantastically long first season at the top level culminated in the Young Player of the Tournament award at Euro 2020 last summer.
But the Canary Islander looked fresh and sharp in his first World Cup game. He was key to everything Spain did. Within five minutes his pinpoint diagonal over the Costa Rica defence set up a chance for Dani Olmo, who volleyed just wide.
Pedri’s teammates, especially veteran Barca partner Sergio Busquets, kept feeding him the ball. And he kept moving it on with an efficiency and economy which was not at all flashy but continually pierced Costa Rica’s midfield and defensive lines.
The first half pass map shows just how often and how clinically he cut Costa Rica apart, with 69 of 72 passes completed. He was not directly involved near the end of any of the first half goals but it was his probing passing which kept freeing Jordi Alba down the left-hand side, and all three originated just that way.
Dermot Corrigan
The difficult second goal
The great Michael Cox observed that Spain are the World Cup team that play closest to a club side, and their pass-and-move football in the final third made this group stage game resemble a high-end Champions League tie. It may have angered the purists to see Gavi wearing the number 9 and Rodri at centre-back but it mattered little — when things clicked they were playing positionless football.
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Those watching via UK broadcast were treated to commentary saying Oscar Duarte’s foul on Alba in the penalty area was the result of fatigue… in the 29th minute of the game. Ferran Torres converted the resultant penalty and Spain were 3-0 up within 31 minutes, the highest scoreline at that stage during any group game.
Costa Rica spent the first half chasing shadows while Spain’s dizzying carousel of a midfield left them sick. Unlike Argentina and Germany, this was a World Cup favourite that made their early pressure count and got those additional goals before half-time.
Carl Anka
Spain scoring ‘Spain’ goals again
If you hadn’t seen the game and had to guess how Spain would score their goals, the first two were exactly how you would have imagined.
After Dani Olmo, Marco Asensio and Ferran Torres rotated their positions in the front three early on, it settled on Asensio in the centre position and, as usual, dropping to link with the midfield three.
The first came after a Spanish passing combination before Olmo darted in behind the defence from the left half-space to meet Gavi’s pass.
As for the second, it was a classic Spanish move, with Olmo moving inside to drag Costa Rica’s right-back with him, freeing the advancing Alba out wide. Busquets then found his Barcelona team-mate with a cross field pass, before the left-back played the cutback into the late Asensio who was originally deeper as per his role in possession.
Movement inside from wide player, cross field pass into advancing Alba and a cutback. Can this goal get any more Spanish?
Ahmed Walid
Cold reality for Costa Rica’s old men
If it was all fun and games for Spain’s young kids, this was a dose of cold reality for Costa Rica’s old men.
Manager Luis Fernando Suarez has been criticised in his adopted country for showing too much faith in the squad’s veterans, and the Colombian can expect much more of the same after this.
The XI for their World Cup opener had six players who starred in Costa Rica’s finest-ever World Cup back in 2014, when they qualified from a group in which Italy and England were eliminated, and were only knocked out on penalties by the Netherlands in the quarter-finals.
None of Keylor Navas, Celso Borges, Yeltsin Tejeda, Duarte, Joel Campbell or Bryan Ruiz had great games. Thirty-something midfielders Borges and Tejeda were given the runaround by teenagers Pedri and Gavi. Ex-Espanyol centre-back Duarte also looked befuddled as he fouled Alba for the penalty.
It would have been especially painful for ex-Real Madrid goalkeeper Navas. He is yet to have played a single minute for his current club Paris Saint-Germain so far in 2022-23. There were no absolute clangers, but he might have done better to stop Asensio’s strike, and was also part of a collective defensive muddle as Ferran made it 4-0 soon after half time.
Dermot Corrigan
Asensio Revived?
Another of the selection decisions being puzzled over pre-game was Luis Enrique picking Asensio in the middle of his front three; he usually seen at Real Madrid as a wide attacker, or more often as a back-up sat on Estadio Santiago Bernabeu bench.
After bringing him back into the Spain squad last June after a two-year absence Luis Enrique has mostly used Asensio in that position. Although he has denied, via his Twitch stream, that he was being played as a false nine, saying he occupied the same spaces as more traditional centre-forward Alvaro Morata and linked the play together in a similar way.
That may be true but another of the traditional tasks of a central attacker is to find the net regularly, and Asensio came into the game with just one goal in his previous 31 senior international caps.
A scuffed 20-yarder after Pedri set him up when the game was still scoreless looked like a warning sign, but sharp pressing to dispossess Costa Rica’s Francisco Calvo was just what his coach wanted.
Soon after Olmo’s opener came further confirmation that Luis Enrique knows what he is on about. When Alba’s cross fizzed across the box, Asensio’s connection was ideal as he swept the ball out of the reach of his former Madrid colleague Navas into the far corner.
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The surprise reinvention of Asensio could also affect his club career — he tried to leave Madrid last summer but has returned to Carlo Ancelotti’s plans in recent months. With just over six months left on his Bernabeu contract, his negotiating position just strengthened.
Dermot Corrigan
Rodri at centre-back works out just fine
Centre-back has long been a problem for Spain since the Gerard Pique and Sergio Ramos partnership broke up after World Cup 2018. France-born Aymeric Laporte was called up for Euro 2020, while Eric Garcia and Pau Torres have both played regularly without ever really convincing. Valencia youngster Hugo Guillamon was a surprise fourth CB in the squad for the tournament, particularly as most of his La Liga experience has also been as a deep midfielder.
Rodri played at centre-back in September’s Nations League game at Portugal, and again towards the end of last week’s warm-up friendly in Jordan. He has also covered there a few times for Manchester City in emergencies.
Since arriving in Qatar he had trained there alongside Laporte, but this was a huge call to make for a World Cup opening game. The reasoning was that Rodri has physical capabilities to deal with Costa Rica’s directness in attack, and most importantly, an excellent range of passing out from the back with his team expected to dominate possession throughout.
“We think our centre-backs will have two situations today: touch the ball more than 100 times, and battle for long balls,” Spain assistant coach Rafel Pol told Movistar TV pre-game. “Rodri can help us with both of those.”
That turned out to be exactly right. Rodri exceeded the 100-pass mark with just over an hour played. He also won his physical battles on the few times Costa Rica got anywhere near Spain’s box, and showed good anticipation and confidence to cut out some of the very rare counter-attacks.
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So the selection worked ideally against Costa Rica, but now to see whether Luis Enrique will stick with it for the surely more challenging other group games against Germany and Japan.
Dermot Corrigan
Morata could be the difference
Morata is a curious player in that he has everything you want from a modern striker apart from that X Factor intangible evident in the greats.
The World Cup should be the perfect “bubble environment” where a player can catch fire for a short run of games and look amazing. A small injury meant the Atletico Madrid striker had to do with a substitute role but he was introduced in the 57th minute with Spain 4-0 up and in cruise control.
Within 16 minutes of coming on, he had more touches in the box than the nearest Costa Rican player (4). An offside run and shot (saved by Navas) illustrated the promising/frustrating dynamic of Morata’s game. A goal in the 92nd, when Costa Rican legs were exhausted, and spirits were broken, is the sort of thing Morata needs to get into a good goalscoring groove.
A fit and firing Morata might one day be the difference between a deep Spain run in this tournament or a disappointing exit. But for now, the superstitious striker with a confusing Wikipedia page that really needs to be updated (he is a permanent Atletico player at the moment) can ease himself into Qatar 2022.
Carl Anka
(Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)