He was everything you wouldn't imagine in a Brazilian striker. A target-man style centre-forward, he had the poise and balance of a baby giraffe on ice.

Retrospectively, he was probably responsible for that great side not winning the trophy that year. They had some great players who pinged the ball around beautifully in midfield, but when they came to play that killer precision pass down the side of the centre-half they looked up and saw Serginho – and remembered the only chance they had of bringing him into the game was to give the ball to the full-back who then had to hoist in a big angled cross.

Naturally, the gifted Brazilians balked at this and failed to win the World Cup.

Luca Toni is the modern Italian equivalent of Serginho. He is hardly in the great tradition of Italian strikers. And even when they did hoist the ball in he failed to make his aerial power tell.

So, I suppose, without a Vialli or Del Piero to be cultured around the box, we should not be surprised the Italians reverted to type and pulled everybody behind the ball. So thank heavens Spain won the penalty shoot-out. Not only is my tip still alive and kicking, but it saved me and Mrs X from taking opposing sides as the competition progressed.

I admitted, during the Spain-Italy encounter, that if Spain went out I would be supporting Russia, the one remaining entertaining team in the competition.

This enraged her – and I shouldn't have been surprised. When Russia struck their second goal against Holland – Mrs X's chosen team (as a woman she liked the colour!) – she grunted: "Stupid game." But she didn't stop there.

"I don't want the Russians to win. They're not even part of Europe. They're not even in the European Union, they shouldn't be allowed to compete. They only won the Eurovision Song Contest because they got all the satellite states to vote for them…"

As a reason for not wanting a team to win the European Championship, the fact they'd recently won the Eurovision Song Contest was a new one on me.

Her stress is easy to understand, however. I appear to be winning the battle for the sofa. While I have been forced to watch some of the lesser matches upstairs, I have at least laid claim to the sofa for the German games, by rising early and laying a towel down across both cushions.

The final? Spain to beat Germany.

(Dave Bowers is editor of Fairway to Green)