Fabulous Fabregas sets up a capital clash

The great thing about the five-man Spanish midfield is its wonderful flexibility and interchangeability, with such slick, technically accomplished passers like Xavi, David Silva and Andres Iniesta all switching positions and taking turns in attacking and defensive duties. Russia couldn't cope with this bewitching, thoroughly modern vision of football totality.

"We could handle Torres and Villa but with an extra midfielder came more mobility, all done at such quick pace. Then it's just a matter of time with their class," said Hiddink. He wasn't wrong.

After the break, Spain's reign in the rain was absolute, Iniesta setting up Xavi for the first before Fabregas superbly played in Torres's replacement, Daniel Guiza, and then Silva.

The Arsenal man was so splendid that the Barcelona bigwigs, here to look at their supposed must-have No10 in the red shirt, Andriy Arshavin, just ended up reflecting miserably again on how the hell they'd lost that other No10 in the yellow when he was just 16. Poor old Arshavin; it looked as if the pressure of being Europe's most wanted froze him.

Like Ballack, Fabregas has had to live with accusations that he hasn't delivered for his country in the way he has at club level and, like the Chelsea man, he is now offering the definitive retort.

Yet Fabregas, remember, is 10 years younger at 21. Still, Aragones noted, he was playing out there with the experience of a 27- or 28-year-old and with all the quality of "a great player".

It's all turning into a personal triumph for Aragones here, with the Spanish press, so often his most merciless critics, now writing love letters to his brilliant coaching nous.

His side have been a cut above anything in the tournament - even Italy's familiar suffocation job was deservedly punished in the shoot-out - but he's too canny and his country too scarred by previous failures to make rash predictions about a 44-year wait for a major trophy, since their 1964 European Championship win in Madrid, being about to end. Not with Germany as the final obstacle.

Spain thinks as England always has. You could glean that from Aragones's reference last night to the favourite line of his old chum at Barcelona, Gary Lineker, about "football being a game of 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win". Already last night, Xavi was labelling Joachim Low's men as the favourites "because for many years we haven't won anything while they're always there fighting for titles".

There's a danger here. Spain can't now afford to talk themselves into an inferiority complex. Like hell are Germany favourites. They've gone along in starbursts and porridge and have a now-dodgy keeper - sorry, Jens - while Spain have played the best football, boast the best goalie in the competition, a midfield of all the talents and a dazzling striker. Their time has come. As long as they believe it.

So in a fitting heavyweight climax to a wonderful tournament, what will prevail? Germany's athleticism, power and unimpeachable self-belief or Spain's superior skill, quality and artistry, hung on an uncertain fragility of temperament.

In pure footballing terms, the wish has to be that Fabregas consigns Ballack to his by now traditional runners-up spot.