The first of the biggies threw up a direction that this FIFA World Cup is taking -- all out attack and slim defence seems to be the tactic of the opening days of this tournament now being watched by more than 4 billion worldwide.
Though on the notebooks, Portugal is a much lesser team than Spain, fixated on its star performer Cristiano Ronaldo, it is here to perform -- mainly with the aim of outperforming, like it did with Spain.
Six goals in a high intensity match is no mean achievement and even though Spain stuck to its complex tiki-taka short pass brilliance, it could not go past the super brilliance of one Mr Ronaldo who scored the Cup's first hattrick with a style so uniquely his that everything else, even Diego Costa's astonishing double, shrunk into oblivion as the match drew to its end. Not that the Spanish goalie did not assist Ronaldo in the second goal but that is no reason why we need to ignore the V sign tagged on to Ronaldo's golden boot.
Apart from Ronaldo, the other thing that struck viewers was the fact that Spain's playing tactic has been figured out to a large extent and they would have to go an extra mile to introduce some surprse elements in their style of play. Other than that, it was evident that possession of the ball did not convert into goals for Spain. They had possession 80 per cent of the time and struck in the Portuguese D more than 15-16 times and yet were unable to score at a comparative pace. Opposed to this, Portugal gameplanned a strike five to six times and scored three goals in that.
Thanks to the draw, strange things have happened in this Group. Minnows Iran are on the top with three points and the top rankers Spain and Portugal come only after that. Morocco, with a scorecard of 18 wins on a friendlies trot, ended it with a horrifying self-goal!
Indeed, there's some scintillating action in store.