DO­HA, Qatar (AP) — Not since Pelé in 1958 had some­one as young as Gavi scored a goal at the World Cup.

The 18-year-old mid­field­er led the way Wednes­day as Spain pulled off the biggest World Cup vic­to­ry in its his­to­ry, rout­ing Cos­ta Ri­ca 7-0.

“I could nev­er have imag­ined it,” said Gavi, who was named the game’s most valu­able play­er. “I know I’m the youngest in the team and I re­spect every­one, but on the field it’s dif­fer­ent and I bring out my best.”

Pelé scored two goals in the 1958 fi­nal, when Brazil won its first World Cup by beat­ing Swe­den 5-2.

“I’m proud to be in that podi­um," he said. "Not even in my dreams I had imag­ined this."

Gavi on­ly man­aged to score one goal on Wednes­day, but his team­mates added plen­ty of oth­ers.

Not long af­ter Japan sur­prised Ger­many 2-1 in the oth­er Group E match, Spain's young squad avoid­ed any chance of an up­set with Dani Ol­mo, Mar­co Asen­sio and Fer­ran Tor­res scor­ing a goal each in the first half. Tor­res, Gavi, Car­los Sol­er and Ál­varo Mora­ta added to the lead in the sec­ond half.

In ad­di­tion to Gavi's mark, Ol­mo’s goal was the 100th at World Cups for “La Ro­ja,” which be­came the sixth na­tion to score more than 100 times in the tour­na­ment.

It was the first time Spain scored sev­en goals in a World Cup match, and the first time a team com­plet­ed 1,000 pass­es in a 90-minute game at the tour­na­ment.

“Our on­ly goal is to con­trol the game con­tin­u­ous­ly, and to do that you need to have the ball,” Spain coach Luis En­rique said.

With Gavi and 19-year-old Pedri start­ing, Spain al­so be­came the first Eu­ro­pean na­tion with two teenagers in the start­ing line­up of a World Cup match in 60 years, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics plat­form Op­ta.

Gavi and Pedri were among the many young­sters picked by Luis En­rique in a re­vamped squad in Qatar — the third-youngest team among the 32 na­tions, af­ter the Unit­ed States and Ghana.

The young duo helped Spain con­trol the pace of the match from the start at Al Thu­ma­ma Sta­di­um. The 22-year-old Tor­res, who is dat­ing the daugh­ter of coach Luis En­rique, scored his first World Cup goal from the penal­ty spot in the 31st minute. The oth­ers came dur­ing the run of play.

“When things go your way like this, soc­cer be­comes won­der­ful,” Luis En­rique said. “We played ex­cep­tion­al­ly well with and with­out the ball.”

Cos­ta Ri­ca looked over­whelmed through­out the game in its third straight World Cup cam­paign, fail­ing to even get a sin­gle at­tempt on goal. The team came to Qatar hop­ing to re­peat its sur­prise run to the quar­ter­fi­nals in 2014 in Brazil, and avoid a re­peat of its win­less show­ing four years ago in Rus­sia.

“We didn't hold on to the pos­ses­sion as we should have done it," Cos­ta Ri­ca coach Luis Fer­nan­do Suárez said. “We couldn't com­plete three or four pass­es.”

Span­ish play­ers made it look easy with the ball on their feet, fin­ish­ing the match with 72% of pos­ses­sion.

Spain, which didn’t get past the round of 16 in Rus­sia, is try­ing to break through with a ma­jor ti­tle af­ter mak­ing it to the fi­nal of the Na­tions League and the semi­fi­nals of last year's Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­onship. This year the team al­so qual­i­fied for the Fi­nal Four of the Na­tions League for a sec­ond straight time. Spain's last ma­jor tri­umph came at Eu­ro 2012, two years af­ter it won its lone World Cup ti­tle in South Africa.

On­ly five coun­tries have scored more goals than Spain at the World Cup — Brazil, Ger­many, Ar­genti­na, Italy and France.

Spain next faces four-time World Cup cham­pi­on Ger­many on Sun­day in one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed match­es of the World Cup.

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AP World Cup cov­er­age: https://ap­news.com/hub/world-cup and https://twit­ter.com/AP_Sports

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