INTERNATIONAL SOCCER Germany 0 Spain 1: THE CLOSING ceremony at the Ernst-Happel stadium last night bore a startling resemblance to something the people behind It's a Knockout might have dreamt up. The evening's real run-around came in the 90 minutes that followed, however, with Spain outclassing Germany to lift their second European title and thus end 44 miserable years of unfulfilled expectation.
They go home as worthy champions after holding their nerve in a game they might well have won by a bigger margin. As they had throughout this tournament, they pursued their victory with enterprising and hugely entertaining football and, four years after Greece tasted success thanks to an entirely different approach, the manner of their triumph provides just cause for celebration amongst the neutrals too
Fernando Torres got the game's only goal 11 minutes before half-time after which the three-times champions huffed and puffed but never really came close to producing what would have been a worthy match-winning display.
Despite having raised their game on a couple of occasions previously during the past couple of the weeks all the vulnerabilities we had known about ahead of the tournament were evident here. The defence was substandard and the attack looked out of sorts. And in between, even their most formidable unit, the midfield, was outplayed on this occasion.
With a single goal having decided it, the win will be remembered as a narrow one but it's hard to imagine the Germans could dispute the superiority throughout of Luis Aragones' side.
Central defence was supposed to have been a key concern for the 69-year-old as he prepared for this competition but having arrived for the final with a significantly better record than their opposite numbers, Carles Puyol and Carlos Marchena, ably protected in midfield by Marcos Senna, seemed almost to coast through the evening.
In terms of possession, the game's opening half was just about even but penetration was another thing altogether, with Spain, after a shaky first few minutes, consistently looking the more likely side to open the scoring.
True, they were a little lucky not to be punished when Sergio Ramos badly underhit a back pass for Puyol and Miroslav Klose stole in, only to miscontrol under pressure from the chasing Barcelona centre back.
And the hearts of their fans must have skipped a beat too before the referee waved away a German appeal when the ball had brushed against Joan Capdevila's arm inside the box.
Like the Russians, though, Joachim Loew's side ultimately found the movement and passing of this Spanish side's midfield impossible to handle.
With David Villa out, Cesc Fabregas's inclusion combined with a fine performance by Xavi meant they were at their most creative and if they struggled through the opening stages to find Torres, they would quickly make amends.
Jens Lehmann's first task of the night had actually been to prevent Christoph Metzelder turning the ball into his own net but the Liverpool striker was soon giving both German centre backs cause for embarrassment as his side began to find its stride.
Metzelder fouled him clumsily out wide when his footwork proved a little mesmerising but far worse followed in the centre where Torres somehow climbed high above Per Mertesacker to head Sergio Ramos' cross off the post.
Mertesacker redeemed himself moments later with a marvellous challenge as Torres prepared to shoot from close range but Philipp Lahm was then left trailing by the striker, who got between the left back and Lehmann after pursuing a low through ball from Xavi and finished with a coolly taken chipped shot that cleared the goalkeeper's legs before bobbling into the bottom left corner.
Within a couple of minutes, Spain might have doubled their lead when Andres Iniesta found David Silva in space inside the box but the winger tried a first-time volley and his shot flew wildly off target. The Germans, it was clear, were living terribly dangerously.
In the middle, Torsten Frings was doing his best to stem the flow of Spanish passes forward and Michael Ballack was being dragged more and more into lending a hand to the defensive effort. After Marcos Senna inadvertently head-butted the German skipper as the pair rose together for the same high ball, the Chelsea midfielder spent most of the half's closing stages receiving treatment for an eye injury and in his absence his team-mates provided firm evidence that another potentially critical aspect of the team's game was not firing properly, with Bastian Schweinsteiger then Thomas Hitzlsperger squandering free kicks from promising positions.
Lahm was replaced at the break and the Germans looked a little better for a spell after it but Klose found it impossible to escape the attentions of the two Spanish centre backs and even after Kevin Kuranyi was thrown on to lend support, Iker Casillas had remarkably little to do.
Having changed the shape of his side once in the hope he might be able to engineer more of a threat, the scale of Loew's gamble inevitably grew as the game wore on but it was the Spanish who repeatedly came close to grabbing a second.
Their best chances fell to Torres, who almost replicated his goal before being replaced approaching the half-way point in the half, Ramos, who sent a free header straight at Lehmann, Iniesta, whose close-range shot was blocked on the line by Frings, and finally Senna, who just couldn't stretch the extra inch required to turn Daniel Guiza's downward header into an empty net.
The Germans were aggrieved to be still playing against 11 men by the time the latter couple of chances came around for they felt Italian referee Roberto Rosetti should have sent Silva off for his part in an altercation with Lukas Podolski. The official did err on the side of leniency, but he did well overall and the real injustice last night would have been a victory for a side that, for all its strengths, was simply second best.
GERMANY (4-2-3-1):Lehmann; Friedrich, Mertesacker, Metzelder, Lahm (Jansen, half-time); Frings, Hitzlsperger (Kuranyi, 58 mins); Schweinsteiger, Ballack, Podolsky; Klose (Gomes, 78 mins). Subs not used: Enke, Adler, Fritz, Westermann, Rolfes, Neuville, Trochowski, Borowski, Odonkor. Booked: Ballack, Kuranyi.
SPAIN (4-1-4-1):Casillas; Sergio Ramos, Puyol, Marchena, Capdevila; Senna; Silva (Cazorla, 66 mins), Xavi, Fabregas (Xabi Alonso, 63 mins), Iniesta; Torres (Guiza, 78 mins). Subs not used: Palop, Reina, Albiol, Fernando Navarro, Villa, Sergio Garcia, Arbeloa, Juanito, De la Red. Booked: Casillas, Torres.
Referee: Roberto Rosetti(Italy).
