Four wonderful goals and all the debates about Spain’s style suddenly seemed rather academic.

As Antonin Panenka stepped up, a hush fell over the Marakana in Belgrade.

At the World Cup, Germany scored 13 goals in six games and were widely hailed as a great attacking side – or rather they were a great counter-attacking side.

Russia woke yesterday with a sense of disbelief.

Frantisek Smuda, the Poland coach, stares out from the front cover of the current Polish version of Newsweek, a look of impressive resolution on his face.

Shakhtar Donetsk won their sixth league title in eight years last week, a 3-0 win over bottom-of-the-table Oleksandriya ensuring that they would again finish above Dynamo Kiev.

Having converted a low cross from the right to give Nigeria the lead against Bulgaria, Yekini stood in the goal, arms through the net, hands alternately clenched around the strings and clasped to his face as tears rolled down his cheeks.

The life of a great football team is brief: as the great Hungarian coach Bela Guttmann observed, “the third season is fatal”.

After Borussia Dortmund won the league title last season, their coach Jurgen Klopp was determined that nobody should get carried away.

The only predictable thing about Emelec’s late winner against Olimpia in the Copa Libertadores last week was that it was a Quinonez who scored it.