Spain maintained their perfect start by seeing off Czechia in Oviedo, with Lamine Yamal once again the centre of attention — and once again scoring inside the opening minutes.
Yamal might have struck even sooner. Fifteen seconds in, the first frisson of excitement went round the ground as he chased down the goalkeeper, and after just 57 seconds Oviedo almost exploded. Running on to a Dani Olmo pass, he calmly guided a shot past the Czechia goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky — and past the post.
He had to wait until the sixth minute instead. Playing a quick one-two with Dani Olmo, Yamal took possession on the top right corner of the area and curled another outrageous shot into the far corner. Only 5 minutes 20 seconds had been played, and he had been out there for 320 seconds — taking him to 494 seconds to score three.
That figure underlines the scale of his run. Yamal had scored after 104 seconds at Wembley and after 70 seconds in Seville, as Spain defeated England and Croatia. In Oviedo, the ridiculous was becoming routine.
England, meanwhile, were on a high after a historic rout of Croatia, the other dominant result of the matchday. Writing about that fixture, Barney Ronay noted that most memories of Croatia v England would centre on the children who populated the crowd, their high-pitched voices making the match resemble a teen idol pop concert.
For Ronay, it was at the very least a confusing message — one that seemed to say that racism and children were a good combination. Given how regularly this appeared to happen, he wrote, racism now seemed to be a kind of children’s holiday event around there, football Christmas, complete with a bonus bag of free tickets brought to you by the matchday sponsor, racism.
Speaking after the win in Croatia, the manager reflected on a camp that had not been easy at its start, following an excellent performance against Spain. “If you feel pain you have to lay with the pain,” he said. “The same with disappointment. It was not easy at the beginning of the camp. We had an excellent performance against Spain. The focus in the meetings, the translation of the meetings on the pitch, to bring it within these circumstances in Croatia, to win this dominant performance is the way to move on. We’ll always have a scar, feel pain, but this is the way to move forward. We’ve played in the same manner all three matches.”