Tonight:
5°c
Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Eichmann, Marlene Dietr ich, Gunter Grass, Kraftwerk, Johann Sebastian Bach, Leni Riefenstahl, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nena and your 99 red balloons, Otto von Bismarck, my friend Frank from the Turkish baths in Bayswater, Michael Stich, Albert Einstein. Can you hear me, Brothers Grimm, can you hear me? Your boys took a hell of a beating, a hell of a beating . . . such a savage and sustained hiding, in fact, that I can't recall so absolutely one sided a tournament final.
From about the 15th minute, when Spain's first serious attack settled the nerves that had threatened to paralyse them, this was an Hispanic masterclass in sharp, crisp, elegant possession football and the Germans could only huff and puff in perpetual retreat.
They were clueless almost everywhere, but especially in both full-back positions, in the face of opposition vastly superior in every regard.
Finally, then, that ancient clichemust be interred. Spain are no longer what Gary Lineker called "the biennial underachievers of world football" ( technically correct, I suppose, since they have screwed it up every two years).
Today they are the great achievers of European football and who would dare bet against them going global in their domination when the World Cup reaches South Africa in 2010? For with such majestic talents as Fernando Torres, the glorious Cesc Fabregas, the brilliant but alarmingly pale-faced Andres Iniesta, man of the tournament Marcos Senna and the absent David Villa, this is potentially one of the great national sides.
Did any of us dare believe that they would translate their ostentatious talent advantage over everyone into victory? I know I didn't.
Every fatalistic bone in the body murmured that Germany would do to Spain what they did to Turks and commit floodlight robbery once again.
Football being the most fiendishly amoral of games, all too seldom does palpably the best side in a tournament raise the trophy. Argentina two years ago and the Dutch in 1974 both succumbed to Teuton resilience, while the most depressing failure of all belonged to the 1982 Brazil of Socrates, Falcao, Eder, Junior and Zico - possibly the most flamboyantly-gifted group ever assembled, but suicidally contemptuous of defensive discipline.
The Spanish, on the other hand, defended with the same assured cohesion as they built their attacks.
So for once justice was done as a truly captivating tournament - one enlivened by Holland, Croatia, Portugal, those splendid Turks and, of course, the absence of England - ended as it deserved to end. What has happened to
Germany since they played with such brio in the 2006 World Cup I can't quite work out.
But they have regressed alarmingly, and only their supreme confidence in their right to contest the grandest prizes carried them further than they strictly should have gone. Ultimately, though, and thankfully, self-belief was insufficient for them.
The 4-0 victory the balance of chances clearly justified (not once was Iker Casillas required to break sweat) would have been the icing on the Battenburg, but we mustn't be greedy.
This was a night, and a tournament, to remind old buffers like me why we fell so in love with football long ago and such is the warmth of the afterglow that we must offer the most blatantly insincere sympathies to the German nation for being lumbered with a team that lacked the wit to do any more than take what was, in case I somehow forgot to mention this before, a hell of a beating.
Reader views (1)
Isn’t it about time that reporters such as yourselves refrain from incitement such as you are obviously creating in your opening paragraph.
My families suffered immeasurably in the 1930s and 1940s, more than you can ever imagine. Especially, Mr Norman, as you were not even born in the earlier part of the century.
Yet it is time to simply stop creating an environment in which many thrive. Let us play sport for sport sake and keep out the politics of hatred.
We in South Africa have at times experienced similar situations when remembering the Boer War but have, I feel, largely overcome the sentiments on the sports fields.
Please focus on sport and do not endeavour to raise your profile through the means you have exhibited.
- K P Marcus, Cape Town, South Africa, 04/07/2008 12:18
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