itsbeautifuloutside

Spain v Chile

Rio de Janeiro, 18th June 2014

Match Report

Yeah, Bye

All Things Must Pass, sang George Harrison in 1970. Spanish Bombs, declared The Clash in 1979. You’re So Shit It’s Unbelievable, intimated Girls Aloud in 2004. And in 2014, the greatest football story of the century so far, apparently, came to a crashing halt.

Spain are the world and double European champions, you know, and at the Maracanã on Wednesday they became the first team to leave the World Cup, knocked out of a major tournament for the first time in eight years – thanks to a pretty tasty looking Chile.

The tone had been set from the start with two chances for Chile inside the first 80 seconds, and they were good ones, too, for Eduardo Vargas and Gonzalo Jara. And on 20 minutes, they sliced Spain open: Alexis Sánchez, Arturo Vidal and Aránguiz combined on the right, sprinting forward, Aránguiz cleverly cut the ball towards Vargas, who took one touch, to take him away from the scrambling Casillas, and scored. It was a brilliant goal and one that defined Chile: fast, aggressive, incisive and collective – and extremely skilful too.

Spain looked lost, slow to the ball, imprecise in their passing. Andrés Iniesta kept his head but all around him team-mates were losing theirs; Chile could now smell blood and they raced around still, seemingly stuck on fast forward.

Chile made it 2-0 and to all intents ended the contest just before half-time. Sánchez was fouled by Xabi Alonso and took the free-kick himself. The ball swung towards Casillas, who chose to punch. If the idea was questionable, the execution was awful. The ball fell straight to Aránguiz, who controlled well and toe-poked it into the net. The abyss opened before Spain and before their captain in particular.

Er, at that point we turned over for the ruddy brilliant new series of 24 - not long until the final episode filmed in Southampton, right readers? - but it became clear on Twitter that it was all over bar the shouting, mainly by the Chile fans.

Mates of mine did a World Cup story for a betting brand a few weeks ago using Countdown’s Rachel Riley, in which she predicted Chile to win the tournament – they might be on to something.

skooba