Sublime Spain The Worthy Winner

• Independent, Monday, June 30, 2008 1:15 PM

There's barely a soccer journalist alive who doesn't think that Spain deserved to win the European Championship Sunday, its first title for 44 years. The Spanish won the final with a moment of brilliance that epitomized their "flair, panache and style," writes Sam Wallace. Fernando Torres' sweet winning goal "was the moment when their brightest young matador dispatched a very stubborn, cantankerous old bull."
 
Germany was "tired, short on ideas and easily defeated in the end" against a Spanish side "impossible to dislike, a team of passing maestros who might have been physically dwarfed by their German opposition but towered above them in the more technical elements of the game." The day belonged not just to Torres, but to Marcos Senna, Spain's "outstanding midfielder."
 
"The under-achievers of European football triumphed over the continent's over-achievers," Wallace continues, "and unless you happen to carry a German passport that was the right result for this tournament." Spain outshot Germany, 13-2, with the losing team "incapable of generating the momentum to respond" to Torres' goal. The Germans switched to a 4-4-2, but apart from one brief flurry in the second half, could have lost by many more.

Read the whole story at Independent »