So it's just after six o'clock in the morning here in Andalucia and you'll have to six o'clock in the morning here in Andalusia and you'll have to pardon the slightly croaky voice. Lots of shouting, lots of raising my voice yesterday and not a lot of sleep, not because of partying, but because of

watching the extraordinary games between Germany, Hungary, France and Portugal, then to bed and up, well, up before the crack of dawn,

as I'll explain to you, as I look out to my right at the moment the sun is beginning to rise over what you call

hills in this part of Andalusia because Andalusia has its mountains but they're not surrounding

us at the moment so to our left and right are lots of low flat plains,

little bumps in a far distance on the horizon and this kind of orange lava glow coming up from left to right all across my vision.

And the easy thing to say is the sun is coming up on Thursday but the sun is not

setting on the Spanish football empire not not for the moment at least. And what's keeping me going

and keeping me recording is the buzz, the endorphins still felt from Wednesday afternoon because what we got is a mixture of the drama tension, but also then about an hour, an hour, maybe 70 minutes, of precisely

the reason that you're listening to this and I'm talking to you.

A reminder of precisely why it is that we love football, why it occupies so much of our time, our thinking, our planning, our money, our passion, our energy,

because irrespective of this being Spain's chance to qualify or go out, irrespective of

prod Slovakia being being mercilessly pummeled by the end of it.

What we saw was football at its most beautiful.

I really thought that there were long passages of flow and invention and risk and remorseless hunger ambition to win during most of the second half, maybe a little bit of the first half too.

The mix of still frustration when the goals initially wouldn't go in,

but Spain were still knocking at the door and yeah they

missed another penalty and I'm talking like Joe Strummer there in my own ear I can't

believe we all need people sorry Sorry Joe, but I suppose Spain gave us a little appetizer kind of go, hey look,

mosey mosey here's the cheese. We were going to keep missing chances again because they had, they should have scored two or three around the penalty itself.

By the time the penalty went in I remember writing the big question now is it didn't go in the

big question now is mentality because the other day against Poland the shoulder slumped only once, not initially once Livandowski scored, but once the penalty was missed by Moreno.

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