Spain refuse to buckle under the weight of English expectation

Rodri limped and wobbled his way down into the corner where a rumbling mass of Roja had engulfed Mikel Oyarzabal and only four minutes remained. 

Rodri had a word for a couple of teammates, shepherding the flock from afar. They’d make it safely to historic pastures, and as the gold and glitter fell soon after, the Olympiastadion was saluting a fourth European Championship for Spain. And ending that simply had to be.

A substitute had swung the ultimate direction of Euro 2024 as we thought one might. He just hadn’t come off the bench we’d expected. 

But ultimately in that gorgeous winner, this was a tournament getting the champions it deserved only because they rose above, refusing to buckle where others had, under the weight of an English expectation that was built on a lot of sand but almost enough. Spain surely deserved this. Call it justice and sweet justice at that.

Gareth Southgate’s side should have been dead but were alive again until Oyarzabal, with the help of a stunning link-up with Marc Cucurella, finally slayed the survivors. England simply never matched Spain for quality or ambition — all too familiar failings. 

They relied on graft rather than anything that looked like craft. Declan Rice looked a man who’d come too far as the fate of the tournament came down England’s right, the soft part of the beast’s belly.

Harry Kane had again been wretched, Jude Bellingham giving an impression of a game-changer rather than actually being one. Kobbie Mainoo couldn’t match his semi-final heroics with Jordan Pickford saving English skins. 

But we’ve spent far too much of this month talking about a team that so rarely functioned as one. 

This was Spain’s tournament and theirs alone.

Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal ended the night with their names in lights, man of the match and young player of the tournament awards dished out before the big prize was lifted. 

In lights is where you’ll expect them to stay. Even injured, Rodri won’t move from the limelight either, named the player of Euro 2024. Are Luis de la Fuente’s men as perfect as the previous Spanish dynasty? Not yet. 

But they were as perfect as Euro 2024 needed and certainly did so much more than the side which stepped up to take a now familiar silver, England’s fans having made for the exits.

Probably the most distinctive aspect of the Olympiastadion is the Marathon Gate, a huge gap at the western end of the stadium, an entire segment cleaved out of the giant bowl during its construction in 1936 for the Olympic Cauldron to stand out prominently. 

In spite of its dark past there’s an enduring magnificence about this place, an event feels big and historic just by being here. The gap has helped make the Olympiastadion instantly identifiable when helicopter shots beam back. A flaw, something missing, has become a feature.

Here it was a bubbling cauldron of Englishness, white masses flying in to see Southgate’s team, where the flaw — you know, actually playing marginally well — had become England’s feature too. It was too present again on this night.

Germans appeared to get the only revenge remaining by fleecing England fans on the resale market, the crowds streaming out from the zentrum to Berlin’s west so heavily English that you wondered if the final would have a home-away feel. Indeed it would. 

Organisers did their bit in the hour before kickoff too, playing Oasis, Robbie Williams, Three Lions and Vindaloo all in a row. Whither the Macarena? 

The song choices were distinctly 90s nostalgia but that is exactly the kind of era, Lineker and Gascoigne, Shearer and Sheringham, Beckham and Owen, that Southgate has painstakingly tried to push his England past.

When a mercifully snappy closing ceremony cleared, the thick pyrotechnic haze hung over the place. It would fit in with a first half when a game worthy of the stage struggled to emerge with any great clarity. England didn’t string more than four passes together in a dominant opening 15 minutes for the Spanish. 

Alas, the entire half they’d be dominant in a way we’ve seen before but not here. We saw it in Qatar and, before that, Russia when they’d pass opponents to death only to plunge the knife into themselves in the process.

Phil Foden was doing his best to shadow Rodri and reduce his influence. It says plenty about his brilliance that we can say that Foden was pretty successful in his task yet Rodri was the half’s best player. 

Luke Shaw ran him close, shutting down Lamine Yamal and finally giving England some balance. They were defending manfully but Kane lumbered around up top.

The tension that hung as heavily as the smoke meant it was compelling but not in any sort of attractive way. 

The ugliest moment of the half would be its most consequential when from the left Bellingham found Kane. 

Rodri strained every sinew to get a block in, his leg doing this cartoonish spaghetti-limbed skid across the turf before crashing into Aymeric Laporte.

As the host broadcaster tried desperately to cobble together a first-half highlights package word, slowly filtered out through the sweeping stands of the Olympiastadion during the interval that the stretch had left Rodri stricken. 

Southgate and his assistants came out for the second half and glanced at the Spanish technical area where Martín Zubimendi had taken off his tracksuit. Incredibly good fortune was again smiling on him.

They’d contrive to throw it away before finding it all over again. What a treasure Yamal has been this month. 

Shut down for the first 45 minutes, he needed less than two more to carve England open. Already sweeping the broad brushstrokes of a personal masterpiece, Williams took it superbly.

With 17 minutes remaining Cole Palmer would take his first touch with even more grace. The momentum suddenly swung back to Southgate’s side who’d done little to grasp it. Yes, he’d made a consequential substitute and yes they might just get away with it again but how could that ever be seen as enough?

You could almost begin to hear the argument that England might, actually, have made fitting champions for a far-from-vintage tournament, respect the grind, that kind of nonsense. 

Oyarzabal, bless him, killed that argument dead. A seventh win from seven. Two wonderful goals to seal it all, a heroic defensive stand at the end when thrice England were denied.

As this grand old house turned yellow and red for the trophy presentation and the pyrotechnics kicked up again, a little of the colour and noise was lost through the black gap at Marathon Gate. 

No matter. Spain had given us more than enough and the trophy was in Alvaro Morata's hands and then Rodri's. Where it truly belonged.