Something changed in Spanish football two years ago when Spain was crowned European Champions in Austria and Switzerland.

The side coached by Luis Aragones produced flowing exciting attacking football and was clearly the best team in the tournament long before Fernando Torres confirmed their superiority with the winning goal in the final against Germany.

That win merely showed how far Spain had progressed, but the key moment was not against Germany, it was when the Spanish beat Italy in a penalty shoot out in the quarter-finals.

Previously the quarter-finals had been a glass ceiling for Spain: they could see what lay on the other side, but were never able to get through. There was almost a feeling of resignation in Spanish football that it was just not going to happen.

In 2008 it finally did happen and what 's more it happened against Italy, a side the Spanish believe plays inferior football to their passing game, yet which always seemed to beat them in major competitions.

Everyone in Spain remembers how Italy beat the Spanish in the quarter-finals of the 1994 World Cup, a game in which the image of Spain midfielder Luis Enrique bleeding from a broken nose after being hit by an Italian elbow, is almost engrained on the public psyche.

The fact is that Spain has always underachieved in big tournaments in recent years. The hosts disappointed in the 1982 World Cup, caving in under the weight of expectation in a country still getting used to democracy.

In 1986 the Spanish destroyed the exciting Denmark team 5-1 in Mexico, but then one of the best Spanish 11' s in history containing players such as Emilio Butragueno, Michel, Victor Munoz and Andoni Goikoetxea crashed out of the quarter-finals, losing on penalties to Belgium.

In 1990 another strong team crashed out to a Yugoslavian side soon to be torn apart by civil war in the last 16. The year 1994 saw Spain reach the quarter-finals before the well-documented defeat to Italy, while in 1998 Javier Clemente's team failed to get out of its group in France.

The fact the Spanish won their final game 6-1 against Bulgaria only served to add to Spanish frustration.