La Roja needs an element of Furia

,have  felt, himself

somewhat vindicated in his wisely meditated defence of  La Roja.

This was a game played at its most physical-the fooball ‘con cojones’ which the first English

pioneers brought to the Rio Tinto mines near Huelva and the port of Bilbao the

Basque country, and which became synonymous with the Spanish game as approved

by General Franco.This was what Spaniards turned into their own expression of

virility, a tough and uncompromising as Wayne Rooney’s . They called it La Furia- the Fury.

The match we saw on Sunday had various ingredients displayed

by both sides -courage, resilience, determination- that bordered on the heroic-

even if in the end there was no physical annihilation of one  side by the other, only an anti-climatic

victory by penalties which is a poor form of justice.

It was a  game not distinguished

by flair or creativity: back-kicks were way off target, there was lack of

fluidity in mid-field, and neither side’s possession or passing was

particularly inspired. No single player stood out for me, although English

goalkeeper Hart was a rock in defence-until the penalties.

To watch all this aggression resolved in the end not with a bang

but with a whimper inevitably provokes a reflection on its antithesis – the technical,patient,

game which the Spanish team have demonstrated in this tournament and for which

Del Bosque has received some criticism because it has not exactly set the

tournament on fire.

This criticism has been based on the view that Spain’s game,

for all technique, has lacked resolution in overpowering, and destroying the enemy.

It is a criticism that Del Bosque and his players find difficult to understand

given statistics that  show that  La Roja have

outperformed every other team in Euro 2012 on every measure  from number of successful passes to number of

goals

Nevertheless , with the exception of the match against the Republic

of Ireland,  Del Bosque’s team have

failed to entertain us-setting aide moments of brilliance, the poetry of the

ball has not flowed with its characteristic motion, the organisation of the

team has been well short of perfect  choreography.

As I note in my latest book on Spanish football,the  Franco encouraged the the national stereotype

as   mythified in the literary figure of Don

Quixote, the incarnation of the spirit of noncompromise , with its hopelessness

 and failure forgotten beside his nobility

of purpose. And yet for all its aggression, Spain in those years failed to conquer-instead

it underachieved. After its victory over the Soviet Union in the European

Nations Cup final in 1964, Spain had to wait until the Euro championships in 2008

before winning any other major  football

tournament. By then, drawing on the legacy of the South Americans and the

Dutch, Spain had embraced tiqui-taca, the

style that prioritised passing, patience,and possession above all else.

But let us remember too that that  tournament was won by Spain in the final

against Germany with a goal by Fernando Torres that epitomized the artistry

Spain had stood for from the outset of the tournament. As I write in my book La Roja, ‘it was the moment when the

Spanish squad’s brightest young matador dispatched an ageing bull that had lost

its fire and nobility. The Germans tried o resist a team that had passed the

ball like gods. But this was a plodding veterans’ German well- past its sell-by

date that in the end the end conceded the winning goal to a much better team,

full of promise.”

After Sunday’s game,the likelyhood is that we are once

against heading towards a Spain-Germany Euro final. Del Bosque told me once

that he knew La Roja were on  their way

to becoming World champions when they ‘lost their fear’ . and went out and beat

a rejuvenated German team in the semifinals of 2010.

I believe La Roja can

deserve set a new record by winning Euro 2012. But it needs to lift itself ,

and play with the spirited beauty of worthy champions.