The octopus wins again...

You mean Puyol?

I never said that Greece has the same quality as Spain, since Spain's quality is completely outstanding.

What I meant was that the minimalistic approach (a.k.a - one goal victory and then full defense with midfield control to disrupt any strategy from the opposing team) is very similar. 

Nope. Haven't you heard about Paul, the psychic octopus? Got it right all the germany games so far the damn thing.

But many teams play with a one goal lead strategy. Nearly all teams try to shut down and disrupt if they lead by 1-0 in the second half.

Spanish football is art, Greece are butchers.

Although I surely agree that Greece truly were experts at shutting down and disrupting in the Euro Cup in Portugal as soon as they got the one goal lead.

Come on Spain, just those pesky Dutch left! If Bosque keeps his squad up the way he has, they should bag the cup.

Well, in this WC, especially on the elimination rounds, Spain has actually been the only one using that strategy. Granted, they had easy chances to do 2-0 or 3-0, but most of their game after the goal was zone-position defending with an 8-men line, Xavi midfield control and excellent pass forward trying to get the lone german defender out of pace. 

This was brilliantly done, though, but it's still minimalistic. It doesn't take from their brilliant victory today, since they dominated throughout most of the 90 minutes.

Portugal was to blame in that game though. We had a lot of chances to score in the first half and we didn't take them. Greece had already shown what would happen when a team does that. 

I thought that Scolari and his pupils had learned from the initial defeat in the opening game, but they did the same mistakes in the final. 

Pretty disappointing -  again we came so far, just to fail so close to the finish line. :-/

I'm still hoping for a title in the "near" future. Well... next up: EURO 2012.