BILLY BUNTER

Weblog: The football punter

How did we ever doubt those brilliant Spaniards

SPAIN earned me a few quid at the death though Andres Iniesta taking player of the tournament honours took a little of the gloss off it. I’d been on John O’Shea.

Pretty much the perfect final wasn’t it? Unless you’d backed the Italians, of course. Spain at a decent price, Mario Balotelli exposed for what he is – a stroppy, one-trick drama queen – and the best team in the world turning on the style.

How could we have ever doubted them? To think, there was a point midway through that tournament when sane men were reasoning that Roy Hodgson’s wonderful England were going to go on and lift the trophy and that Spain were utter bores.

Thirty years from now – when Scotland are world champs – we’ll look back on this and wonder if we’d all lost our marbles.

Anyway, a great tournament, nicely hosted and to think, if the increasingly laughable Michel Platini, this will have been the penultimate finals to have been hosted in one or two countries.

In 2020, according to Platini, the Euros are going to be staged all over Europe. “It will be a lot easier from a financial perspective,” he says. For who exactly? Clearly not the fans who would be shelling out for flights all over Europe just to see their team get through the group phase. Still, it’s nothing for the Scots to worry about, eh.