The group stage is something you have to do but the World Cup starts here, Lamine Yamal had insisted, and down on the Pacific that was how it played out.
It wasn’t that Spain defeated Austria to reach the last 16 where they will face Portugal or Croatia, their first victory at the knockout stage since they were champions back in 2010; it was that on an enjoyable sunny afternoon they were Spain again.
Two goals from Mikel Oyarzabal and another from Pedro Porro completed a 3-0 win that was as recognisably theirs as their coach had requested.
For the fourth consecutive game Spain kept a clean sheet, Unai Simón breaking Iker Casillas’s record and Pau Cubarsí and Aymeric Laporte confirming their status as the centre-back pair of the tournament so far, but what really stood out was what was happening everywhere else.
A little flat until now, that opening quarter against Saudi Arabia apart, here they flew and the ball did too.
Intense, incisive, and ultimately entirely dominant.
A lot of fun too, right from the start.
And if Austria played their part then, by the time Oyarzabal added the third, this belonged only to Spain.
What had looked like being a game had ended up belonging only to them.
Continue reading...Sources: The Guardian
