Spain, team of the 21st century in international football, have turned into very ordinary defending champions. Two years on from a dispiriting first-round exit for the title-holders at the Brazil World Cup, they gave up their European title limply, eliminated at the first knockout stage by an Italy whose 2-0 margin of victory might easily have been wider.
Spain turned into a poor team defensively, too, at the Stade de France, with the distinguished exception of goalkeeper David De Gea, whose brilliance at blocking the efforts of Italian strikers bearing down on him, one-on-one was put on display enough times that he is entitled to ask why so broad a gap was left in front of him for those zippy Azzurri to accelerate into. When Spain won the European championship in 2012, they let in a single goal the entire tournament, and that was against Italy in the opening match of their six. On Monday, they let in two Italian goals, one in each half, and De Gea kept out perhaps four more, twice answering the industrious, imaginative Emanuele Giaccherini with spectacular stops and quick and calm off his line to deny Eder and Lorenzo Insigne.
Signs of Spanish unease in front of De Gea were alarmingly apparent early on. Then Sergio Ramos slashed at and miscued a clearance. De Gea felt angry with himself for parrying an Eder free-kick into the path of Giorgio Chiellini for the first goal. But he will also have noted that Chiellini had picked up the loose ball quicker than any Spaniard.
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That was in keeping with most of the game: an Italian urgency, which they will hope to take into Saturday’s quarter-final against Germany, against an insipid Spain. Complacency, the decadence of champions can hardly be a cause. Yes, Spain won the last two of these championships but events in Brazil ought to have acted as a shake-up to any sense of entitlement. So ought losing to Croatia in their last group match.
Spain were still favourites ahead of this tie. Italy came to this tournament to an anti-serenade. Told by several generations worth of pundits and former players that manager Antonio Conte had assembled the least gifted, least creative squad for a major tournament that could be remembered, they were given only a slim chance of progressing beyond the last 16. It got slimmer, consensus had it, once Spain failed to win their group and thus landed in opposition to the Azzurri at an unexpectedly early stage.
The threadbare nature of the squad was not blamed on Conte, but on an ordinary vintage of Italian footballers in their mid-20s, and the unfortunate loss of some key ones to injury, particularly in midfield, where Claudio Marchisio, Marco Verratti and Ricardo Montolivo are all unfit. Conte can only use what he can find, and he is obliged to lean on his veterans and use all his nous to make a team greater than the sum of its attacking parts.
Some of Conte’s veterans know what it is to be part of a champion Italy. Gianluigi Buffon and Danielle De Rossi were part of the side that won the 2006 World Cup, and here they were, at the sound of the half-time whistle, a decade older, having a vivid, voices-raised, exchange of views. Italy had every right at that stage to be congratulating themselves. Yet the seniors were fired up, cross at the errors that had been made in a 45 minutes Italy largely commanded.
It was hard not to see the energy of the Italians, certainly for the first hour, being directly transmitted from Conte’s technical area at far higher voltage than anything coming from the calmer Vicente Del Bosque, the Spain manager.
He named the same Spain line-up as he had for every match so far. There is no failing in that, but the front three — Nolito, David Silva and Alvaro Morata — got very little out of the back three Conte spent three seasons as Juventus manager picking in his line-ups, the trio he then trusted through his time in charge of Italy.
Those weathered warriors — Leonardo Bonucci, Andre Barzagli and Chiellini — suffered one uncharacteristic episode of confusion very early, allowing David Silva a sight of goal he could not capitalise on, but from then on they intimidated the Spaniards.
By the end, Spain had tried four distinct versions of a front three — let Del Bosque not be accused of excessive faith in his favoured 11 — once Aritz Aduriz, a half-time substitute had been substituted himself because of injury.
Their most potent attacking threat turned out to be Gerard Pique, the defender corralled forward as Spain chased an equaliser. He issued a pair of thumping shots that drew reactions from Buffon, in goal, quite as sharp as De Gea’s had been at the other end.
And poor De Gea could nothing to keep out Graziano Pelle’s late header, the second goal, the coup de grace on a deserved triumph.
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