David Silva

Brazil legend Zico has been critical of Manchester city star David Silva, who was disappointing in the opening 5-1 defeat for Spain against Netherlands and the World Cup 2014. Silva started in the number 10 role for the world champions. He was creating a lot of opportunities in the first half, but the second half was a horror show for Silva and the Spanish national team as a whole. They were thrashed 5-1 by the Dutch national team, who they defeated in the World Cup 2010 final.

A number of reasons have been put towards the failure of the Spanish in their opening match. One of the opinions is from Zico, who says that Silva failed to impose himself on the match in the second half because he was trying too hard. This is a Spanish team with a lot of playmakers, but Silva was the one playing further forward. The likes of Andres Iniesta and Xavi were playing in a much deeper role. Spain will be hoping to recover from this thrashing as soon as possible and they take on Chile on Thursday.

A defeat or dropped points from this match is likely to end the forms of qualifying for the knockout stages. Hence, the Spanish are expected to go with a lot of determination. "I was not counting on the Netherlands to begin with. I thought that Chile and Spain were the favourites and Chile would face Brazil in the next round, but the Netherlands had a good game and proved that they have good players. Spain dominated the first half and had a great chance to settle the game, but maybe Silva tried to do too much by himself; he tried to score too beautiful a goal," said Zico.

Netherlands, meanwhile, take on Australia and are the favourites to win quite comfortably.