Spain v Holland: World Cup 2014 – as it happened

Good evening. At the start of every new Mad Men series, you don't have to look too hard to find people saying that it's lost its touch. Not as good as it was. They should have ended it years ago. It can never be the same again. How can you maintain those standards? Impossible. Should have gone out when they were out on top, like The Office, Fawlty Towers or One Tree Hill did, and now all they're left with are memories of the glory days – and what are they worth? Nothing. They're worth. Yesterday's darlings, today's nobodies and to think that they were once such a big deal. Look how young they once looked! And now look. 

Rabid nonsense, of course. It's still good, still better than the competition, and you can guarantee that the same people who were so 

critical of it at the start are the ones gushing about it at the end. But that's nostalgia for you. Humans are fundamentally conditioned to look wistfully to the past, when things were just better when they are now, they just were. We can't help ourselves, we're only human. It's true in some cases – the first series of Power Rangers was obviously the original and best, for instance, and they should never have come back for that extra season of Scrubs – but not always.

And so, at long last, to Spain, world and European champions but apparently in decline, there for the taking the pundits say, no longer the side that tiki-taka'd their way to the summit and had the rest of the world drooling over their possession game and trying to work out how they too could have their own production line of midfield gnomes who could walk the ball into the net at will (but sometimes choose not to because goals are overrated). Perhaps the backlash was inevitable. Spain have been at the top for so long – six years is a long time – that maybe people have grown tired of them and are waiting for the fall, which can partly be attributed to the sense that Spain's players are so very fascinated and enthralled by their own magnificence – then again, who wouldn't be when you're that good?

The signs have been there. Barcelona, essentially Spain's representatives at club level, were a shambles this season, while the way that Real Madrid crushed Pep Guardiola's Bayern Munich with their speed and power on the counter-attack had everyone heralding the end of tiki-taka. Then there was last summer's Confederations Cup final and that 3-0 defeat at the hands of Brazil. Xavi, the best midfielder the modern game has seen, can no longer control a game as effortlessly as he once did now he's 34; Andres Iniesta has slowed down a little; Cesc Fabregas has had a difficult season; Fernando Torres. People are queuing up to write them off. Apparently you could get Spain at 7-1 at the bookies. At the recent ITV World Cup launch – yeah, I get around – none of their pundits mentioned Spain as potential winners. Brazil, Argentina, Germany, even Portugal. But not Spain.

Weird, isn't it? Maybe it's just because we want to see a new dynasty emerge. But surely Spain are going to have a major say in this World Cup, even if they don't win it. Xavi might not be the force he once was, but he's still Xavi. They've got Iniesta, Fabregas, Sergio Busquets, Xabi Alonso, Santi Cazorla, David Silva, Pedro, Juan Mata and added Diego Costa, the striker who could give them that ever-so-crucial Plan B against the type of massed defence they are likely to face throughout this tournament. Just look at some of the players they've left behind. And then consider that whether or not you find it boring, and plenty do, their possession style effectively stops other teams from getting at them and playing, wearing them out before the killer blow eventually arrives. Spain were once the team that never lived up to their potential; now they are almost the ultimate results machine, ruthless in big matches and never let back by the kind of bottle-jobbery that used to be their achilles' heel. You watch, the hype machine will be whirring again if they put in a performance tonight, and you just sense that they might be itching to prove a few people wrong.

And you know they'll be up for it against Holland. This, of course, is a reprise of the brutal final four years ago, when the Dutch besmirched their historic reputation for playing beautiful football with a display of unapologetic thuggery – Xabi, this is Nigel, Nigel this is Xabi. They got theirs in the end, Iniesta winning it for Spain in extra-time, but the scars still exist from that night. "This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style," Johan Cruyff said at the time. "If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost." Indeed they did and Louis van Gaal's side need to show that they've cleaned up their act again and remind us precisely why there are so many who count the Dutch as their second team.

They weren't much better at the Euros two years ago, exiting in the first round after losing all three of their group matches. "Oranje, shame on you!" roared De Telegraaf. "Never before had the Netherlands taken zero points from the group stage. In other words, Van Marwijk and Co wrote a black page in our football history in Kharkiv." Van Gaal has restored some self-respect, though, and Holland were strong in qualifying. Are they being underrated? They're probably third favourites in this group, behind Chile, but there are plenty of sides who wouldn't mind having Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben, including Spain. Nothing's as bad as you say it is.

There. We've got through an entire preamble without mentioning that Van Gaal is going to Manchester United.