In 2010 Spain beat Netherlands 1-0 in the World Cup Final. On Friday, June 13, 2014, the two teams met in the group stages of this year’s World Cup for a rematch. It was the first game of group B and the Netherlands completely embarrassed Spain winning 5-1.
The game started off slow and the Dutch started very physical committing an overall 18 fouls when Spain only commit five. At the 27th minute Spain was awarded a penalty kick for what should have been a non-call. Diego Costa of Spain fell down because he stepped on a sliding Stefan de Vrij, defender from Netherlands, but no other contact was made – it should not have been called.
Moving forward Spain looked in control until Robin van Persie scored the equalizer in the 44th minute on a brilliant diving header.
van Persie: "It must be the goal of my career. I saw Casillas standing a bit in front, so I decided to go for a loop" pic.twitter.com/k3cC6Xe38m
— World Cup 2014 (@WorldCupPosts) June 14, 2014
image via Twitter from WorldCupPosts
After that goal the two teams went into the locker room for halftime, but it seemed as if only one team came back onto the pitch. Netherlands absolutely embarrassed Spain in the second half as if they could do nothing wrong.
"I did not expect that it would go this way, it could have been 6-1 or even more,” Dutch coach Louis van Gaal told reporters after the match, "This is a nice start, but we have nothing. If we do not win our next game against Australia we have made no progress, but now we are obviously in a good position." via CNN.
The Dutch attack was so effective that they had 14 shots, 11 on target and five of them goals according to NYTimes.
Moving on the Netherlands are set to play Australia and Spain to play Chile on June 18th.