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Torres and Azpilicueta partake in the death of tiki-taka, as Diego Costa shows off his Chelsea DNA

The World Cup isn't even a week old, yet Chile have already eliminated the defending champions with a 2-0 win.

Jamie Squire

Well, one thing's for certain:  Diego Costa is going to fit right in with Chelsea's cadre of misfiring strikers.

Here's how Chelsea strikers present, past, and future are looking so far:

  • Fernando Torres: 54 min., 0 shots, 0 on-target, 0 goals
  • Diego Costa:  126 min., 5 shots, 0 on-target, 0 goals (one sweet bicycle kick cross though)
  • Samuel Eto'o:  90 min., 2 shots, 0 on-target, 0 goals (one post)
  • Romelu Lukaku: 58 min., 0 shots, 0 on-target,  0 goals

On the other hand:

  • Daniel Sturridge:  80 min., 3 shots, 2 on-target, 1 goal

Ah, nuts!

In any case, today we witnessed the first two official eliminations from the 2014 World Cup.  Brave, entertaining Australia and sad, boring Spain are both heading home after giving up over six goals each in their first two matches (all losses).  At least the Socceroos scored a few.

As somebody in the comments put it, at least Cesc Fabregas wasn't involved, so we didn't have to subject ourselves to sad post-match reaction shots from Chelsea's newest player.  Unfortunately, Cesar Azpilicueta was involved throughout it all, but we'll excuse his issues since he had to play with center backs like Gerard Pique and Sergio Ramos rather than John Terry and Gary Cahill.*  Turns out that not even the great and mighty Dave can always mark two players successfully at the same time.

* And a goalkeeper like Iker Casillas rather than Petr Cech.

So Spain become the second-straight defending World Cup champion to be eliminated in the group stages.  By the end, not even they were playing tiki-taka (barely over 80% pass completion).  Good riddance.

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