Spain 2008-2012: Euro, World Cup and Euro Again in Four Years

Before 2008 Spain had won one major international trophy, the European Championship of 1964, played at home. For more than four decades after that the team was known for reaching tournaments with strong squads and leaving them early, usually in a quarter-final. Between June 2008 and July 2012 it won the European Championship, the World Cup and the European Championship again. No national team had won three major tournaments in a row before.

Euro 2008: Vienna, and a goal from Torres

Euro 2008 was played in Austria and Switzerland, and Spain arrived under Luis Aragonés, who had built the side around a midfield of small, quick passers rather than the more physical players Spanish teams had often relied on. The final was played on 29 June at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion in Vienna against Germany. In the 33rd minute Xavi played the ball through, Fernando Torres got in front of Philipp Lahm on the edge of the area and lifted it over Jens Lehmann. Spain won 1–0.

Xavi was named the player of the tournament. David Villa finished top scorer with four goals, despite missing the final through injury. Aragonés left after the final, and Vicente del Bosque took over.

An unbeaten run, and the team that ended it

Spain went 35 matches without defeat from November 2006, a run that took in the whole of Euro 2008. It ended in the semi-final of the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa, a year before the World Cup in the same country, when the United States won 2–0. The result is still one of the better-known upsets of that period, partly because of who Spain went on to beat a year later.

2010: the World Cup, after losing the first game

Spain started the 2010 World Cup by losing 1–0 to Switzerland in Durban. They won every game after that, each knockout match by a single goal: Portugal, Paraguay, Germany in the semi-final with a header from Carles Puyol, and the Netherlands in the final at Soccer City, where Andrés Iniesta scored in the 116th minute. Spain scored eight goals in seven matches, the fewest of any World Cup winner, and conceded two. Iker Casillas won the Golden Glove. The library's World Cup 2010 collection covers the tournament itself.

Euro 2012: Kyiv and the biggest final win

Euro 2012 was held in Poland and Ukraine, and the final was played on 1 July at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv against Italy, who had drawn 1–1 with Spain in the group stage. It was not close. David Silva headed the first goal in the 14th minute and Jordi Alba ran onto a pass from Xavi for the second before half-time. Italy had used all three substitutions when Thiago Motta was injured with about half an hour left, and played the rest of the match with ten men. Torres and Juan Mata added two more late on. The 4–0 score is still the largest margin in a European Championship final, and Spain became the first team to retain the trophy.

The core of the side

The midfield changed less across the four years than the change of manager suggests. Iker Casillas was in goal and captain throughout. Sergio Ramos, Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué and Joan Capdevila formed the defence that started the 2010 final, with Sergio Busquets and Xabi Alonso in front of them, Xavi and Iniesta ahead of those two, Pedro on one side and David Villa as the furthest forward. Fernando Torres, the scorer in Vienna, was on the bench in Johannesburg after an injury-hit season and came on in extra time.

By 2012 Puyol and Villa were both missing through injury, and Jordi Alba had taken the left-back place. The two full-backs who started the Kyiv final, Alba and Álvaro Arbeloa, illustrate how much of the defence turned over while the midfield did not. Xavi and Iniesta started all three finals, and in Kyiv Busquets and Alonso lined up beside them exactly as they had in Johannesburg two years earlier.

How they played

The style was given the name tiki-taka: short passes, constant movement, and keeping the ball for long periods, partly as a way of defending, since the opposition could not score without it. The core of it came from the Barcelona midfield of the same years, Xavi, Iniesta and later Sergio Busquets, with Xabi Alonso alongside them. The approach had critics, particularly in 2012, when del Bosque often played without a recognised centre-forward and the team kept the ball for long spells without creating much. The results answered most of them.

For wallpapers of the players named here, the library has pages for Xavi, David Villa and Sergio Busquets, and the national teams collection holds the Spain artwork of the era.