World Cup Spain

Holland’s Robin van Persie launches himself at a diagonal pass from Daley Blind to equalise against Spain. Photograph: Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images

Every seven or eight minutes another goal came ... and every goal was another hole in what I was writing; with each goal my piece was more irrelevant. One goal at a time it fell apart. As the end of the game approached, it was torn up completely and forgotten. Write something else. This was much bigger. Write about what had happened instead and what it meant.

But what had happened? And what did it mean? Even then, even straight after Spain lost 5-1 to Holland, I was not really sure. Not yet. I was not even yet sure that it was the end but it was; Spain’s World Cup had pretty much finished before most countries’ tournament had even started. That generation, the most successful in football history, had gone – one goal at a time.

It had all happened so fast, yet oddly it had happened steadily too. Holland scored on 44, 53, 64, 72 and 80 minutes. Even at half-time no one really anticipated what was to happen next. There was a sense of guilt, or perhaps weakness, at not having spoken out: we had all seen flaws before the tournament but we had all thought Spain would get it right. Here Spain had taken the lead and should have extended it. On 44 minutes Robin van Persie had scored that incredible diving header. But it was still only 1-1; Spain might still win this. A draw was likely. What was not likely was what came next. From a writing point of view it was not time to abort mission yet.

I should clarify that I was not doing the match report that day; Paul Wilson was. I was to watch Diego Costa – the Brazilian playing for Spain at the World Cup in Brazil. I watched him run and call for the ball, watched him try to understand his team-mates, listened to the supporters have a go at him. I started to see him as symbolic to Spain’s struggles, a good player in the wrong team, for so many reasons. It had been a difficult day for him.

It ended up being so difficult for all of them that his personal battle was eclipsed by all of their misery. Costa became irrelevant, except that he was a portrait of them all. With each goal it was less about him. Paul chronicled the game and my story of Costa, designed to accompany his report, seemed increasingly redundant. So when Costa went off, the piece on him was filed. Soon it was filed away. It was time for a rethink, though even I was not sure Spain were in crisis yet. I remember writing in that first piece that by coming second in the group Costa would most likely meet his compatriots in the next round. But by drawing away from him personally and trying to explain Spain’s collective collapse, a more dramatic conclusion dawned: there might not be a next round.

It had never quite seemed that bad, but by the end it could not have seemed worse. The Dutch were coming at Spain from everywhere and the Spanish looked helpless, completely at a loss to explain it and powerless to stop it. I tried to explain that disarray and, like Spain, was at a bit of a loss. But all those warning alarms from before the tournament were ringing louder now. We had heard them and noted them but Spain had not really acted on them. And we never expected this.

Afterwards there was quiet. Yet as the players departed, there also seemed to be a sense that this was a problem that could still be remedied easily enough. Maybe that was one of the reasons why it was not. They never recovered and perhaps they were never equipped to do so.