Let’s do this by numbers, shall we? For the first time in four World Cups, Spain won their opening game. Ferran Torres scored their 100th goal in the tournament and Gavi, one of two teenagers starting this match, became their youngest scorer. They were just two of six goalscorers with Spain reaching that magical number the vidiprinter needs to spell out to avoid confusion. They took 17 shots, allowed none, and scored 7 (seven) times. No wonder by the time that Carlos Soler scored the sixth, his celebration consisted of a point and a wink, a “we’re here”.
And there was still time for Alvaro Morata to add another, two minutes later. Down on the bench, Luis Enrique was laughing, his team having surely presented their candidacy for the competition. Not least because those weren’t the only numbers and it was the way it felt too. Spain played over one thousand passes here, and if the old question used to run “yeah, but how many of them mattered?” the new answer looks like it could well be: all of them. It is hard to recall a performance as complete as this.
