Carles Puyol headed Spain into their first ever finals of the FIFA World Cup finals after edging past Germany in a gripping second semi-final played at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban here on Wednesday evening.
It was Spaniards best performance in the tournament and that too came at the right time; on the other hand, Germany failed to repeat their heroic acts and were surely knocked out from the title from race with better team winning the place for the finals.
Spain took the attacking approach right from the outset taking advantage of week German midfield in the absence of Thomas Muller. The absence of the new found German hero was totally visible as Germans lacked pace and sharpness in their attack.
While Spain made numerous in-roads in the opponent citadel, but weren’t successful to break the jinx as the scoreline read 0-0 at the lemon break.
Span who denied Germans to walk away with the Euro Champions trophy in the finals in 2008 with a solitary goal victory finally got the decisive goal through their veteran defender Carles Puyol in the 73rd minute. The Barcelona defender headed in superbly a Xavi flag kick to break the deadlock.
Trailing by a goal, Germans fired all the cylinders to bring themselves back in the level terms but their urgency to score came little late as Spain successfully held their one goal advantage to record their name in the history books after clinching their maiden World Cup finals berth.
The Vicente del Bosque boys will now be taking on Netherlands in the finals on July 11 and it will be surely a cracker of a encounter as both the team will be eyeing their first ever World Cup crown.