Victory for Blue steel could KO Germany hopes

My hitherto cast-iron conviction that Germany will win Euro 2012 took a hell of a beating in Munich on Saturday night.

Not because a red-hot favourite German team lost a Champions League final in their own fortress. And not because a German team fluffed their lines in a penalty shoot-out. And not even because we were treated to another late, late show and last-kick drama entirely in keeping with a season in which nothing was predictable except unpredictability itself.

No, the seeds of doubt were sown in the moments after a nerveless Didier Drogba steered home the decisive penalty for Chelsea and, in between shots of the hero and his colleagues performing cartwheels all over the pitch, the camera kept returning to linger on the broken, haunted figure of Bastian Schweinsteiger, the German midfielder who saw his penalty effort steered onto a post by Petr Cech.