A JOY TO BEHOLD SPAIN ON A NIGHT OF PAIN

They waste their prey’s heads as well as their lungs

SPAIN played with a striker last night, but Fernando Torres was only the final punctuation on a letter spelling the end for Ireland. The Chelsea striker scored twice, but to identify him as the main problem in this side is to shriek five minutes into the movie; the problems go way beyond the first visible sign of danger.

There was Sergio Ramos intercepting an Irish through-ball attempt, coming out of defence and then piercing a sweet pass of his own into the Irish area.

And Sergio Busquets, the player who constitutes a bruiser in this team, growling at referees and blocking runs but also moving the ball with r equisite speed and accuracy.

Then there are the creators who will be remembered when these years are dusty and lapsed, Xavi and Xabi Alonso and the wonderful Andres Iniesta.

The memories planted by watching this side up close are something all of us in the PGE Arena in Gdansk last night should treat tenderly. Sides like this do not litter history.

Four players from Barcelona were in their starting Spanish team, but that club’s tiki-taka has been taken by the canny Vicente del Bosque and fitted into the national side.

There has of late been a rebellion i n some quarters against t he deification of Barca, with the evangelical, philosophical, cultish listing of their beauty turning off plenty.

The music made in the Nou Camp really is something to take in up close, however.

A minute after David Silva had wafted in Spain’s second goal, Torres hit a pass behind Xavi. He was instantly berated by Xavi and the man he fetches for, Iniesta.

This is not some beatnik style played by dreamers; it is a game based on feathered touches and blessed skills, yes, but to a large extent on a docker’s appetite for work, too. The man on the ball must use it well, but it is the job of his team-mates to give him options.

Every coach who has ever slung a whistle around his neck demanded options for the man with the ball, but Spain play the game with flashed first-time touches or in spaces too tight for cobwebs. Making yourself available in this plan requires fitness and awareness that can never grow loose.

Taking in the spectacle of Spain rampant explains the solitude of their Polish base. This reporter thought he had travelled into a John Hinde postcard at the start of the week when trying to locate dozing Gniewino, but it makes sense.

Spain play football that busts guts, not minds, and not theirs but their opponents’. Their style must demand a huge amount mentally and physically.

Having no decent coffee shops or boutiques to amble around is a sacrifice worth making when players produce a performance like this.

The reigning champions do not run their prey down. They reduce them to frazzled wrecks but by wasting their heads as well as their lungs. Ireland performed admirably in some instances last night, and as well as could be expected in all cases. Against Spain, that is not enough. It was mortifying to hear Irish supporters booing when Glenn Whelan was whistled up for a foul on Iniesta in the first half. Supporters must show t heir passion but Iniesta had just owned the ball through two phases of play over a 60-second spell.

Taking him down was all Whelan could do, because Iniesta looks as irresistible a player in the flesh as he does on those wet spring Wednesday nights when Barcelona beam into living rooms all over the world.

He bears the strained look of a man who has just returned to his car and found the tyre flat once too often, but plays a game that should have him smiling for the rest of his days.

Ireland did not make them show it last night, but Spain’s advocates argue there is a tougher side to them, too. Sergio Ramos, Busquets and Alonso are all well able to snap into angry tackles, and there is cussedness about Alvaro Arbeloa, too.

In his new hymn to Spanish soccer,

QUINN REPORT: WE’RE GONE IN 170 SECONDS

La Roja, author Jimmy Burns has a chapter heading that reads ‘Football With Cojones’.

And that is what the Spanish project of the past decade has been about, stiffening the team and allowing beauty to bellow.

For most of the 1990s and the first years of this century, too, they were a side considered promising but too slight, the flowers that could not survive a frost. However, even then work was under way to transform the game in the country, and Burns offers a reason for their current dominance that is so simple it hardly seems sufficient: coaches.

English soccer champions have spent decades worrying and wondering about the national team’s lack of success. Spain solved their problems by flooding the country with qualified coaches.

Again, note that their heavensent style is learned through hard, constant and informed practice.

Torres was gone with 17 minutes to play, after sending another shot bulleting beyond Shay Given.

Cesc Fabregas replaced him, and they could have been greeting each other at a wedding; Spain was jubilant by then, the hard work done.

Watch them and you wonder how often do they change their boots: a pair must last Xavi and Iniesta years, because they move the ball with the gentle urges of a mother teaching her child to cycle. The leather should not wear easily.

Bob Dylan wrote a song called Boots of Spanish Leather. It had nothing to do with soccer, but everything to do with longing and the need to see beauty once again.

‘ The same thing I want from you today / I would want again tomorrow,’ Dylan sang.

Irish players could not agree; they have had their fill. The world should enjoy Spain now.