Spanish artistry triumphs to leave England stuck in their class of one

Until last night, England had a friend in the Sleeping Giants' Society.

They and Spain could buy one another drinks, keep each other's spirits up, but then came Euro 2008 and the membership shrank to one.

England look a little lonely today in the club of nations with vast wealth and a deep passion for the game but not much to show for it in silverware.

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Torres and Andres Iniesta celebrate the winner

Maybe the Dutch would like to be friends. Holland's last victory was the 1988 European Championship.

No, cancel that. Too recent to be called a proper ache.

Spain had spent 44 years imploding on the big occasions before a striker reared in the less glamorous half of Madrid and bought by Liverpool at vast cost returned them to Europe's pinnacle, where they last stood in 1964.

That void was even deeper and wider than England's 42-year thumb-twiddling period, but it should be said that Spain also reached the European Championship Final of 1984, while the English have not made it to the last two of any international tournament since 1966.

Fernando Torres, Spain's lone scorer against an outclassed German side, is the perfect embodiment of Premier League football: glamorous, foreign, highly skilled and extremely expensive.

His signing is turning into Liverpool's biggest transfer coup since Kenny Dalglish. But what an irony it is that Torres graces Anfield's stage in one of the positions England need to fill to provide adequate foils for Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen.

Spain's triumph ought to inspire the English game to attain higher levels of technical expertise and tactical nous.

They are unbeaten in 22 matches, won all their games in Switzerland and Austria, and established a settled starting line-up and formation.

Nor was Luis Aragones, their 69-year-old coach, afraid to stand up to his big names, replacing Torres in the semi-final against Russia and again last night 78 minutes into a match-winning performance.

The boy wonder Cesc Fabregas was also hauled off to accommodate the more defensive Xabi Alonso.

Ingenious going forward, Spain were also resolute in defending a lead, something that has been beyond English teams in high-pressure knockout games.

The new European champions may have raided Brazil's gene pool for their excellent defensive midfielder, Marcos Senna, but for the most part this victory reflected native Spanish strengths: a positive spirit and superb dexterity with the ball.

It was always absurd that the home of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia should be stuck in the House of Sleep with England, and now perhaps they can transcend once and for all the old factionalism.

The Spanish were a Great Britain of mutually suspicious tribes until sheer weight of individual talent forced them to do something constructive with it, like win a tournament.

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Fabregas starts the Spain party at the final whistle

And this group are sufficiently young and gifted to launch a major assault on Italy's world title in South Africa in 2010.

Darkness fell on this superbly entertaining event with the best-balanced of many attacking sides clutching the Henri Delaunay Trophy.

Holland and Portugal were equally lustrous in their forward play but neither could match the defensive cohesion of Spain.

Their big psychological breakthrough was eliminating Italy in the quarter-finals. Why, after ejecting the world champions, should they fear an over-rated Russia or inconsistent Germany?

Artistry conquered money and mathematics, and for that we should all rejoice.

The aberration of Greece's victory four years ago is laid to rest and a new European power has emerged to confront Brazil and Argentina in South Africa.

Pepe Reina is probably the Premier League's best keeper. Here, he was stuck on the bench for all six games behind Iker Casillas.

That, plus the presence of Fabregas and Xavi in central midfield, illustrates the depth of Spain's resources.

One hopes Fabio Capello's staff will get to work analysing Spain's triumph and ask new questions about how the game has moved on even since Germany 2006.

Capello's sides favour patience and ball retention. Good, but there is also something faster, more exciting being born.

When Germany lose World Cup Finals they call themselves vice world champions, as if FIFA would promote them to No 1 should anything happen to the folks at the top.

The Germans don't lose finals. It's more that they sometimes fall one stop short of winning them, and become the world game's Dick Cheney.

This extraordinary, erm, selfassurance has come in useful down the years, because German fussball has needed a shield against those who say they play a kind of anti-football, devoid of beauty or colour.

Two anomalies eyeballed each other last night: Germany's scarcely-believable record of reaching 13 finals since 1954, and Spain's long trek through the wilderness.

Now we see a third: Michael Ballack's painful sequence of missing out in showdown games - the 2002 World Cup, from which he was suspended, two Champions League finals and now this.

'Big Boss Ballack', as German papers call him, forfeited much sympathy with his ranting at the referee. Another echo of the English game there. So much work to do at home. But so many good things to aim for.