Valera Turns the Night, and England's Slight Edge Slips Away

England 1 Spain 2

Howard Parkins, the twenty-three-year-old central midfielder, put England ahead on twenty-four minutes, and for a while the evening leaned the way the notebook of expectations had leaned: England, the slight favourites, the side that had swept Belgium aside 4-1 in their semi-final, a crowd of 43,883 with more than half of it — 21,941 souls — travelling for Spain and making the noise of a home support in someone else's house. England had won their previous five, from Sweden in November through Czechia and Slovenia and Algeria and Belgium, and they had the better of the old meetings between these countries. It looked, at that hour, like the expected thing.

Then Nacho Valera, twenty-eight, a striker with the calm of a man who has seen this before, scored on forty-two minutes, and scored again on fifty-seven. Two goals, twelve minutes of the second half apart, and the game had turned. Spain's road here had been a 4-0 dismantling of Italy in the semi-final, and before that a 9-0 in Montenegro, a 2-1 at home to Romania — form that had been interrupted only by those two away defeats in Division A last autumn, in Glasgow and Dublin. They arrived as underdogs and left as winners: an upset, if only a slight one, and the sort that a travelling half of the ground will remember for a long time.

England's run of wins ends here, at the last hurdle, with Parkins's early goal reduced to a footnote. Valera's brace is the story, and Spain take the European International League.