I know we're supposed to hate them, but I did feel sorry for the Germans last night. Going a goal down that late on would have been enough to crush most teams but bless em they still thought they might as well give it a go and really tried for that equaliser, only to be punished even further, not that the second goal really mattered in the end.

Quality goals from the Italians, when you could have fully accepted that the player would have just had a shot from where he was so close to the end of the game, he held it, held it and held it then pinged it through to his team-mate to set up the goal (still a great finish from there though). Shows real football pedigree that.

I think it's important that we should look past our history of wars, previous sporting defeats, etc and embrace the fact that the Germans and Italians played some good stuff and both approached the game in the right way. I think it helps generate the respect that the game needs.

Now we just need France to break some Portuguese legs.