[Fallen Hero]

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Nice post. But before EVERY championship I get sick of hearing about how talented Spain are. So what. There is nothing within the current squad in terms of motivation or mentallity that wasn't there in previous years. Why the following is true I don't know, but:

- Spanish teams consistently go to major championships and produce less than the sum of their parts in terms of talent; dashing hype and expectation.


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There's a huge ammount of variance that comes into play here, I'm surprised how many of you are making this type of comments about Spain and Germany.
In 2002, for example, Spain was playing the best football of the tournament the only team that was even close was Italy, yet both those teams ended up being knocked out basically by the refs against Korea.
In 2004 they were knocked out in the group stage but their group included the two finalists, this is the type of thing people don't usually notice.

A team as talented as spain has to be one of the front runners.

PS: Just remembered in 2000, they lost to france because Raul missed a penalty in the last minute.