Gavi makes World Cup history for Spain in 7-0 thrashing of feeble Costa Rica

Let’s do this by numbers, shall we? For the first time in four World Cups, Spain won their opening game. Dani Olmo scored their 100th goal in the tournament’s history and 18-year-old Gavi, one of two teenagers in the starting lineup, was their youngest ever goalscorer.

They were just two of six different scorers, Spain reaching that magical figure the vidiprinter spells out to avoid confusion and express wonder.

They had 16 shots, allowed none in return, and scored seven times. No wonder Carlos Soler celebrated getting the sixth in the 90th minute with a point and a wink that said: ‘we’re here’. Boy, are they.

There was still time for Álvaro Morata to add another two minutes later, Spain’s No 7 getting Spain’s seventh. Mi Gran Noche by Raphael, a gay icon back home, boomed round the place. It had been a great night, that is for sure, Luis Enrique left laughing, his team having presented their candidacy. Spain played more than a thousand passes and, if the old question used to run “yeah but how many mattered?”, the new answer looks like it could well be: all of them. Pointless? Not a bit of it. It is hard to recall a performance as complete as this.

“We were superb in every aspect of the game and I like the fact we dominated from the first whistle,” Luis Enrique said. “It was very special; everything went well.”

From Costa Rica’s point of view, it might be equally difficult to remember one as calamitous, an aged side mercilessly taken to pieces by kids. For Luis Fernando Suárez’s team it began badly, never got better and could get worse. “Psychologically I’m really worried we won’t be able to recover from this,” he said.

Right to the end, Spain sliced away at them, leaving scars, something cruel about it.

Suárez had anticipated that Spain would have more of the possession, but not like this. By the end, they just wanted it to stop, but Spain refused. Sometimes intent is everything, and theirs was vicious.

The first of the seven arrived after only 11 minutes, and it could already have been the third. Dani Olmo and Marco Asensio had clear chances before Gavi’s deflected dinked pass saw Olmo produce a lovely reverse spin, controlling and turning to slot past Keylor Navas. At that point Fifa’s stats, which