^*^ ‘I always trusted in myself’: Spain’s Carlos Soler takes his chance to shine

Midfielder has put tricky start to the season behind him and showed his worth to Luis Enrique’s side in rout of Costa Rica

No one had a better view of Spain’s greatest World Cup victory than Carlos Soler, from inside and out. Many, many words have been used to describe their 7-0 destruction of Costa Rica, a performance so perfect as to be almost inconceivable, leading the covers of the country’s four sports dailies to run with “brutal”, “dream”, “olé” and “a clockwork red”. But maybe the one that expresses it best is not a word at all. “Pffff,” the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder offers.

It’s the morning after the night before and on the television at Spain’s training camp the goals are playing on a loop. It’s a long loop. Soler sits here, a smile taking over his face; 17 hours earlier, he was pitchside at Al Thumama Stadium, watching the first half. “And the first half … pffff,” he says, which says it all. “On the bench, I enjoyed it.”

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