Yamal's Spain Devour Costa Rica in Miami Heat
Spain's 18-year-old superstar Lamine Yamal turned a Miami afternoon into his personal highlight reel, dismantling Costa Rica so completely that even neutral fans were left shaking their heads and smiling. If you've ever wanted to watch football look genuinely, ridiculously fun, this was the match.
There's a version of Spain that grinds you down, that passes you into submission until you forget what attacking football even looks like. This wasn't that Spain. This was something newer, louder, and considerably more terrifying — a side with Lamine Yamal on one wing and Nico Williams on the other, two kids who play like they've never once been told to calm down.
Costa Rica arrived in Miami carrying the improbable weight of their 2014 legacy, the quarter-final run that made the whole world briefly fall in love with Los Ticos. Keylor Navas, still here at 39, still the heartbeat of a nation, did what he could. But some afternoons, the tide simply doesn't turn in your favour — it crashes over you.
By the final whistle, 4-0 told a polite version of the story. Pedri orchestrated from the centre with that eerie calm he has, the kind that makes chaos look choreographed. Spain didn't just win Group E's opening game — they sent a message to every team left in the tournament. We are here. We are young. And we are absolutely not sorry.
The stakes
A 4-0 opening win puts Spain in the driving seat of Group E and almost certainly guarantees progression to the round of 16 with games to spare. For Costa Rica, the mathematics get brutal fast — they now need results in their remaining two fixtures just to keep a knockout-stage dream alive, and goal difference is already a wound.
The rivalry angle
These two sides met at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where Spain also won convincingly, and there's a cruel pattern forming — Costa Rica keeps showing up to these tournaments with genuine heart, and Spain keeps reminding them of the gap in cold, clinical numbers. It isn't a rivalry so much as a recurring reminder that romance only gets you so far.
Players who could decide it
At 18, he's already the player everyone in the stadium came to watch — quick enough to make defenders look silly, smart enough to make it look effortless.
The quiet conductor — wherever Spain needed order, Pedri appeared, picking passes that seemed impossible until he played them.
Kept the score from being worse through sheer experience and reflexes that defy his age; the one Costa Rican who never stopped believing.
Did you know?
- !Lamine Yamal was born in July 2007 — meaning he was only six years old when Costa Rica famously reached the 2014 World Cup quarter-finals.
- !Hard Rock Stadium in Miami hosted Super Bowl LIV in 2020, but on this June afternoon it got a very different kind of spectacle.
- !Keylor Navas made his World Cup debut in 2014 and is still keeping goal for Costa Rica twelve years later — a remarkable one-man thread through football history.
Head to head
Spain and Costa Rica have met twice at World Cups — in 2014 (a 2-1 Spain loss in the group stage, part of a shocking early exit) and in Qatar 2022, where Spain won 7-0 in one of the tournament's most one-sided results. Today's 4-0 sits somewhere between those extremes, but the direction of travel is clear.
Highlights
Video highlights coming soon