Euro2008: Germany The Big Winners In Last Act Drama

Has such an awful game ever finished in such gut-wrenching drama and contrasting emotions of joy and despair? It was worth waiting every second of the turgid fare served up by Croatia and Turkey just for the excitement of Ivan Klasnic's last-minute header swiftly followed by Semih Senturk's last-second leveller and the subsequent penalty shoot-out.

If football is game of highs and lows, there can rarely have been greater extremes suffered by Croatia, who celebrated en masse one moment and were plunged into a pit of desperation the next. And, with grim inevitability, I believe the real winners when the dust settles will be Germany.

And what about the opposing coaches?

Croatia's Slaven Bilic has become a flavour of the month in this tournament, but I believe he got himself too caught up in trying to celebrate victory prematurely and lost focus for vital seconds. By all means show emotion on the touchline after a goal, but he was left looking embarrassed after he raced to leap in among his players when Klasnic headed what should have been the winner. The coach should have been calm and calculating - not a raging ferment of excitement. He had barely calmed down by the time Semih had stunned a team and a nation with, in this case literally, the final kick of the game.

Now we come to Turkey's Fatih Terim. The Emperor himself and fast becoming one of the real characters of Euro 2008. He is a mixture of menace and emotion on the sidelines, and he has injected an incredible never-say-die attitude into his team.