The first part of Spain was a dinner in which everything went well, from the dishes to the wine; a dinner of old friends, frivolous and not very thorny topics of conversation with abundant and comical disagreements, complicit waiters and an attentive chef who leaves the kitchen a couple of times to join the table, “the best table I have ever had.” All this on a Thursday at 9 p.m. next to the sea; a talented accordionist in the distance and some dolphins crossing the ocean. When the bill arrives, everyone brings it closer to gossip, but no one takes out their wallet. Like Spain with the goal: their best minutes spending it, but no one daring to break it.
He had everything in the first half except the goal, but what he had describes an impressive emotional state. Spain erased Italy until it was left without the blue of its shirt. It was not a team, but a statement: it offers the best football in the Euro Cup today and is the strongest promise. He played with the ball and with the Italians, he played inside with Pedri, Fabián and Morata (an impressive spectacle of Pedri creating spaces, clearing rivals, to receive with meters to think and seconds to run) and outside, with Cucurella, Carvajal, Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams; Spain played, like eleven guys who take the field after one invented the ball dream of playing: the same joy and the same desire. So much and so well that, when the Italians perceived that the Spanish lacked aim, they scored the ball themselves in an unprecedented gesture of good manners.
It was Nico Williams, his party was overwhelming, who messed up all the time for his band until he left a precedent for his Di Lorenzo brand. The Athletic winger broke the axis of the Italian defense and went down his lane to unleash a tense cross, at mid-height, full of cyanide. It was such a schoolyard center that everyone wanted to be part of its story: Morata touched it with his head, Donnaruma touched it with his gloves, and the ball ended up in Calafiori’s unfortunate shins: goal for Spain. About Nico, Mario Suárez said something precious and vintage: that sometimes he asked for water, exhausted, to perhaps deceive the Italians because, when they thought he was dead, he ran around like the son of the wind; Everything referred to the Perico Delgado of the Pyrenees when he detached himself from the lead pack, pretending to be dead, to sink them when they stopped paying attention to him. July is approaching, it’s time for outdoor theater.
Italy, the old rattlesnake that knocked Spain out of the last two European Championships, took the ball out of its field with misplaced, disrespectful nervousness; Spain, failing in front of goal, suffered more than it deserved. In the second half, Lamine Yamal launched an intelligent missile that took off the Italian squad from their boots; if they score, they will have to go from Germany to Santiago on a pilgrimage. How good the selection looks and how many precautions you have to take when it looks so good. Albania awaits what is expected to be a formal match after having secured first position; and the shootings begin, the rounds in which it is not enough to paint well, nor to play beautifully without a goal. It will be after San Juan, when the sardine bones remain from the bonfires. And for those too someone will have to pay the bill.
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