russian

shout, shout, England are out!I'm English

Come on spain you can do it

Disappointing semifinal... Somehow i knew they would get to the penalties.

I completely agree with you paul, I was hoping the potugese could do something in extra time but 0-0 after extra time and the decision not to put ronaldo in the first 3 penelty takers especialy when one of the takers before him was a defender but when it went to extra time spain were on top and you somehow knew they would win

78. min.: 0-1, Di Natale... :P

39. min: Gomez 1-0
58. min: Balotteli 1-1
60-70. Germany gets stronger and Schweinsteiger gets a big change!
72. min: Özil 2-1

I'm probably completely wrong, but i guess it goes like this.
Or has it start already :p

Balotelli = LoL
2-0 for Italy after 36 minutes...

Schade Deutschland...
They lost 1-2 against Italy.
Looks like Spain is going to be the champion, but my hope is Italy. They were my favorite team (besides The Netherlands of course)

What the ... Germany had no men in defense while Italy had about 6. I know it's easy to score when you're alone with the goalkeeper.

Spain??

Pls they plays really bad this tournament with enormous luck.
Before yesterday match i think germans play the best.
But now i have no doubt that Italy win.

Spain wins? looking at how they played against portugal and how italy played against germany i wouldnt have many doubts about saying that it will go for italy.... anyhow, they may play differently than i those games.

Someoen said somethign cristiano on the penalties.... he isnt all that goods at penaltiea and he would probably be the 5th.... its not realle all that important, anyway i desagree with the choices fo9r the penalties, and the portyuguese coach.... 6 men with yellow card, team si tired and he makes 1 substitution in the end of the 90 minutes? taht isnt very smart

Congratz Spain, you earned this victory.
My greatest wish from now on is that they don´t make it through the group fase in 2014.

Ronaldo scored 23/25 of his last penalties... that's not good?! He's an ego-maniac and wanted to score the game-winning penalty.

On another note, VIVA ESPANA!!!

The best team to ever grace the field (yes, even better than the 1970 Brazilians!)

it doesnt make much sense to say a team is better than another in a different period. it really depends on the opposition (amongst other things).

but yeah, spain are very good. 4-0 doesnt tell the whole story, since italy were down a man for the last half hour.

It's irrelevant, at this stage of the game, being dominated in possession and skill so hard demoralizes a team. So yes, another player on the field might have slightly changed things, but their lack of motivation towards the end was not because they were a man down. It was because Spain destroyed them up and down the field.

i dont think they would have conceded 2 more if they had 11 players. they were comfortably beaten, but it wasnt a complete rout until italy went down a man.

Their possession was minimal with 11 players as well. When Spain is in the zone, they're unstoppable. Bottom line, when a team is 2-0 minute 70 in a knock out game, they have little to lose... so they throw everyone up and that's when they start conceding more. It's the all or nothing tactic.

I'm not gonna continue playing these "what if" games. Look at the Germany/Italy game for example. Similar scenario... 2-0 Italy late in the game, Germany throws everyone up, and Italy really should have finished the game on 4-5 goals (they had a ridiculous amount of opportunities in the last 15-20 minutes.) Meanwhile, Germany almost capitalized on that "all or nothing" strategy, by taking the game into 2-1 and getting near the equalizer.

So overall, it's not out of the ordinary, at all, for a team to concede a couple more goals towards the end of a knock out game if they are already losing 2-0, regardless if 11 or 10 men are playing. It also helps that the Spanish are relentless and are never "satisfied" for the scoreline, so they will always put in 100% effort to score more.

If you want to say that had Italy been playing with 11 men for the last bit of the game, things would have been different, you can deal with hypotheticals all you want... I just look at the scoreline.

"I'm not going to continue playing these 'what if' games. [Continues to play 'what if' games for 3 more paragraphs.]"

I did not play "what if" games, I gave a concrete example of what already happened.

Also, classic deflection technique in arguments: attack the person rather than the argument when you know your argument is weak.