Italy leave me with uova on my face

They serve three types of cooked egg at the Hotel Kharhov, located a few yards up from the fabulous fan zone in its namesake city: all are fried and arrive sunny-side up, sunny-side down or rock hard. No matter the method. I had little choice but to order a super-sized helping and wear them all over my face after Italy beat Germany.

That's what happens when you put all your faith in the dynamism of youth. With my Irish heritage you'd have thought I had long taken heed of the cautionary tale in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, and looked beyond the Germans' zest and seen instead the fickle, fleeting nature of youthful power.

For most of the past 4,100 miles on the road chasing matches in Poland and Ukraine, I have been predicting a German showing in the final tomorrow. And after watching them in Lviv against Denmark, I was convinced they would take on Spain in Kiev - and win. So convinced was I after seeing the Italians only graduate to the semis on penalties against England, I had advance-written in my mind two versions of the final 90 minutes of Euro 2012, one beginning with German triumph and the other a narrow loss to the Spanish and a repeat of four years ago.

What was it grandmother said about counting chickens?

At least I got half the equation correct, but I wish I had met Nigerian amateur football philosopher Oroglou Emmanuel earlier. As we stood among the few thousand watching in Kharkov's fan zone, he pointed out the flaw in Joachim Loew's young team.

'Of course the Italians won because they played with passion. The Germans were too clinical, too organised. They lacked the same spiritual force as the Italians. You can teach technique but you can't teach passion,' said the 23-year-old aerospace engineering graduate, who has just completed his four years of study in Kharkov, a city of many students and former Soviet Ukraine's capital.

'I support no team. I am not really a football fan but I have been watching the tournament and you judge which teams are better by their emotions,' he said.