European Champions once again: SPAIN
by: Shanks608
With the recent end to Europe's most prestigious football tournament Spain are once again crowned Champions! Having won the title two times in a row now, plus a recent World Cup win there have been talks that the current Spanish team is the best ever.
Spain and Italy went head to head last Sunday for the Finals of Euro2012. Most people were expecting a tight match since their first meeting in the Group stages ended up in a 1-1 draw. Spain went through the finals via penalty shoot out against Portugal. While Italy defeated Germany 2-1 in a match they dominated.
Spain has been criticized recently by a lot of fans as "boring", for playing a passing game and losing the ability to excite with their attacking game. But they just proved everyone wrong when they drubbed Italy 4-0 with a magnificent display of ball control and precision passes.
Italy just had no answer to Spain's attacks. The opening goal came from a beautiful header by David Silva. Andres Iniesta created the play by passing the ball to an overlapping Cesc Fabregas, chipped it over to Silva in the near post, and headed it past Buffon for the opening goal. Italy almost immediately made a comeback with a free-kick from Andrea Pirlo but was just deflected.
Italy's defender, Giorgio Chiellini, couldn't have had the worst time for injury when at 21 minutes he was subbed out unable to continue with Balzaretti coming in. Things went to worse for Italy when Jordi Alba created a strong run and an incisive breakaway creating a goal. Spain now up by 2 in the first half.
Italy made some decent attempts for goal but Iker Casillas was just up to the task.
Italy started the second half strong with a few changes, Di Natale coming in for Cassano. He immediately made an impact and almost scored a goal. Motta subbed in for Montolivo but things couldn't get worse as he somewhat pulled a hamstring just three minutes into the game unable to continue. Italy now was playing with 10 men and with Spain just dominating possession it started to become a no contest.
Fernando Torres subbed in for Cesc Fabregas around the 75th minute. With a few minutes remaining til full time, Torres latched on to a perfectly executed through ball by Xavi and with no mistake created a goal (3-0). Torres now becomes the first player to score twice in a Euro final. Just when everyone thought it was all over, Juan Mata who came in for Andres Iniesta scored a goal off the bench from an unselfish play by Fernando Torres. The look on the Italian players were just overwhelmed and exhausted.
Full time score 4-0 the biggest scoreline in a Euro Finals.
Spain played an excellent possession game. They were patient with their attacks and were deserving to win the finals. Italy on the other hand couldn't have been unluckier. IMO, had there not been any injuries we could have seen a better, maybe more exciting match up. Italy's showing in the recently concluded Euro2012 can pretty much help the status of their League which has been recently dealt with match fixing scandals. Overall I think it was a good Euro2012. There were upsets, favorites not going through, groupings which were branded to be boring but proved to be more exciting and of course the management handled well the racism issues. With that I give my thumbs up to the organizers!
Next up WORLD CUP 2014 Brazil! Will Spain still continue to dominate?? We'll find out!
Caio!
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