adminSpain did their bit to make it perfect, too, as they belatedly found the key to their magic box.
They presented themselves as a team for whom the preceding five games had merely been a rehearsal, a way of tuning the orchestra before a night when history was theirs to fashion.
Part of their art is how they play when they don’t have the ball. They are drawn to the man in possession like magnetic flies. To play against them — even when you do have the ball — must be utterly draining from first minute to last.
On Sunday, though, Spain brought their “A” game to the Olympic Stadium. They were mesmerising, clinical and thoroughly deserving winners. Ultimately, after three absorbing weeks, we have the right kings of Europe once again.
Italy presented Vicente del Bosque’s team with an admirable challenge for a while and should return home encouraged.
With more attacking precision during a first half that saw them enjoy greater possession, they may actually have equalised before Spain’s killer second goal.
In the second period, though, injuries drained their challenge.
Italy certainly didn’t deserve to lose so heavily and it was uncomfortable to witness their pain.
At full-time Andrea Pirlo — shackled so expertly by Sergio Busquets — was red-eyed. Mario Balotelli, who was also tearful, suffered his pain alone in the players’ tunnel.
They had worked hard to get here, muscling the likes of England and then, memorably, Germany out of their way.
When the ultimate glory beckoned, though, even Pirlo’s majesty, Antonio Cassano’s intelligence and the scurrying efficiency of Riccardo Montolivo were not enough to unsettle this uniquely uncompromising Spain team.
After the question marks of the last two weeks, this was a night when football’s most gifted modern artists found the rhythm and the understanding that most who have tried to play this game will never fathom.
Once again Spain played without a striker. Whether that is the way forward for European football is a debate for another day. Nevertheless, this was undoubtedly not an evening to argue with the system.
On Sunday night things went right for a team delivered perfectly to the start line by a fine coach who understands his players and by a tournament that encourages excellence and real competition.
The second half of this point should not be lost on us.
Part of the beauty of the last three weeks in Poland and Ukraine has been the competition’s simplicity. It has delivered exactly what the football world wants and we shouldn’t forget this as in France in four years’ time it could be different.
Uefa have decreed there will be eight extra teams and this will, of course, bring in more money. What it threatens to do, however, is decrease the quality of the sport.
Spain lifted a trophy seven inches taller than the original. Why? Because Uefa changed it four years ago.
One of the abiding lessons of Euro 2012 should be that bigger is not necessarily better.
Meanwhile, with an average of 2.45 goals per game, Euro 2012 was the most low-scoring European Championship for 16 years, but what it lacked in rippling nets, it made up for in excitement and technical quality.
After a build-up dogged by concerns about infrastructural problems and the potential for fan violence, the competition caught the attention from the opening game.
Robert Lewandowski claimed the tournament’s first goal for co-hosts Poland at Warsaw’s National Stadium, but their opponents Greece secured a 1-1 draw in a breathless game that saw both sides finish with 10 men.
Poland were to entertain again, sharing a thrillingly open 1-1 draw with Russia in their second Group A game before falling to the Czech Republic and exiting the competition.
Fellow hosts Ukraine also bade their farewells in the group phase, but they could at least treasure the sight of 35-year-old national icon Andrei Shevchenko claiming a match-winning brace in the opening 2-1 defeat of Sweden.
By the mid-point of the group stage, journalists were already beginning to draw comparisons with the 2000 tournament in Belgium and Holland, widely seen as a high watermark in the recent history of European football. Portugal let slip a two-goal lead over Denmark in Group B, only to prevail 3-2 through an 87th-minute strike from Silvestre Varela that provided the spark that would take them to the last four.
England also came from behind to beat Sweden 3-2 in Kiev, with substitute Theo Walcott lashing home an equaliser and then motoring down the right flank to tee up Danny Welbeck for a cunning improvised winner.
Penalty shoot-outs were required to separate England and Italy in the quarter-finals, and Spain and Portugal in the last four.
They made villains of Ashley Young, Ashley Cole and Bruno Alves, and heroes of Cesc Fabregas and Andrea Pirlo, who tipped the balance of the shoot-out against England in Italy’s favour with an audacious chipped spot-kick.
Cristiano Ronaldo suddenly found form to score twice in Portugal’s 2-1 win over Holland, before repeating the trick with the only goal against the Czechs in the last eight.
Pirlo and Spain’s Andres Iniesta graced the turf wherever they trod, while Pirlo’s 21-year-old teammate Mario Balotelli came of age in stunning fashion with an emphatic brace against Germany in the semi-finals.
There were also several high-profile flops; most notably Holland’s Robin van Persie and England’s Wayne Rooney, who missed the first two games through
suspension, scored against Ukraine, but then disappeared from sight. Beaten finalists at the last World Cup, the Netherlands vanished amid a cloud of in-fighting and insinuation after three consecutive defeats, with Bert van Marwijk losing his job as coach shortly after.
France, meanwhile, failed to live up to expectations that they could prove to be the tournament’s dark horses, with Laurent Blanc leaving his post as coach following a campaign marred by stories of off-pitch squabbles. — Mailonline.
Online Reporter