Luis de la Fuente had described Spain v Italy as a clásico, a game that could easily be the final; watching this, he might have been half right. The team he coaches beat Italy by an own goal to top the Group of Death with a fixture to spare but that doesn’t tell the story, nor even begin to express the way they took Italy apart. In fact, that the seleccion ultimately needed Riccardo Calafiori to deflect the ball past Gianluigi Donnarumma to win this was absurd. The scoreline could and probably should have been five times that.
The surprise was not that Luciano Spalletti’s side lost here but that they lost so narrowly, that there was any point in their goalkeeper going up for a corner in added time. And that Spain had to suffer any nerves at all towards the end of a night in which they had appeared untouchable, utterly fearless. Reaching the final, on this evidence, is no fantasy.
