Chelsea fans had one eye on Spain vs. the Netherlands to see how future-signing DIego Costa looked during his World Cup debut. While most were left wanting to see a better performance out of the controversial center forward, the Blues did have a trio of players already under contract that featured today.
Of that trio, only Cesar Azpilicueta was in the starting eleven, and he had a relatively uneventful contest. He started the game at right back, and was probably the only member of the back four that didn't look like a 12-year old academy product trying to perform on the world's biggest stage.
Fernando Torres came on after 62 minutes, while Cesc Fabregas eventually took the pitch with just over ten minutes to play. Fabregas was barely noticeable after coming into a game that was long since over, but Torres had a trio of forgettable moments in his thirty minutes on the pitch. First, he managed to miss a point blank shot, but was let off the hook because the referee had whistled a foul:
I'd like to think the miss had something to do with the whistle being blown before the shot, but if you're going to fire away anyway, hitting the target would be pretty neat. What's not excusable is this dreadful attempt minutes later, which ranks right up there with the most memorable flubs of his career:
Torres also had a dive which produced zero contact from the opponent, but I can't find a vine or .gif of it anywhere. If you have one and fell like leaving it in the comments, feel free to do so.
Spain still have at least two more games to go before they end their title defense, and on can imagine that the overall performance can only get better. Let's hope so, because none of our players looked particularly good tonight, even if a pair of them didn't exactly look awful either.