Sixteen Years Of Hurt: Italy beat Germany

Italy 2 Germany 1

“I feel so proud” beamed Gianluca Vialli after Italy’s surprising but deserved victory against the Germany to reach the tournament final.

Vialli’s sudden appearance as a BBC pundit for this match was itself a surprise, and a very welcome one at that. It’s been too long, Gianluca, too long! While Vialli purred before during and after the game, the always watchable Jurgen Klinsmann sat next to him, wincing at the German defending. Alan Shearer completed the punditry trio: the third most fluent English speaker in the team.   

Gianluca had every right to be proud. Italy were positive, intelligent, hard working — brilliant, quite frankly. And the passion was extraordinary. The night began with skipper Gianluigi Buffon belting out the Italian national anthem, eyes closed, chest heaving. It ended with Mario Balotelli’s mother holding her adopted son for a long embrace at the side of the pitch, weeping while Mario explained that his two goals were for her.

Last Christmas, a certain radio pundit compared Balotelli to a young Eric Cantona. His on air colleagues leapt on him, ridiculing the claim; and to be fair to them, Balotelli did little for the remainder of the season to justify the comparison beyond stamping on Scott Parker's face and receiving various bans for other violent conduct.  

But in Warsaw against Germany, the 21 year old fired Italy into the final with such power and ability that any comparison seems vindicated. This was a footballing arrival. An unforgettable moment.

Jogi Low (is it Jogi Low?) had fiddled with his Germany side again, as he had done in the quarter final, and suddenly they revealed weaknesses. In their efforts to stop Italy’s maestro Andrea Pirlo, Germany left large swathes of their right side open, to be exploited by Chiellini and Cassano for Italy’s first goal.

By the time Balotelli scored his second, with a fierce shot that left keeper Manuel Neuer looking like a hitchhiker on the motorway, Germany had all but given up stopping Pirlo, who had carte blanche to control the game just had he had against England. A grave mistake and sign perhaps of Germany’s inexperience.

If Jurgen Klinsmann’s face was anything to go by, Germany’s failure here will have hit the nation hard. So much was expected of them. A final at least? Not since England in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2010 had a team disappointed a nation so much. "They were not nasty enough", concluded Jurgen in his nasal Germanic drawl. (At least I hope he said "nasty"?)

Sixteen years of hurt now for the Germans. Sixteen years since they last won a tournament. And Italy remain the Germans’ bogey team, having incredibly gone unbeaten in all competitive matches against them.

As an Englishman there’s something vaguely reassuring about watching Germans suffer like we do, even if our “years of hurt” are now too many to calculate and we have most of Europe as our bogey team.