Euro 2012: Prandelli's Italy cast off cliches in spectacular style

An old chestnut about international tournaments is that Italy are always plotting, working out the angles, advancing by stealth to finals. Cesare Prandelli's team have buried that stereotype, perhaps on one of their overnight hikes to monasteries.

How do they do it? World champions in 2006, Italy have reached a European Championship final after six years of relative mediocrity, drawing with the mighty Spain in their opening group game and inflicting an old hoodoo on Germany, who have yet to beat them in a competitive match.

Former German internationals who were at Thursday night's shock Italian victory believe the jinx was spinning in the minds of Joachim Low's men, especially after Mario Balotelli scored the first of his two goals. To say Italy are masters of calculation would be to sink back into cliche. Brilliantly organised though they were, the victory sprang more from the heart than the head. Prandelli's masterstroke, Italy watchers say, has been to cultivate a sense of sacrifice, unity and fun.

Any coach who rates his chance of yoking Balotelli and Antonio Cassano as a strike force must have a penchant for psychology. This is Italy's third European Championship final, following their victory over Yugoslavia in 1968 and the defeat to the world champions France in 2000. Prandelli brings an unusual poetic sense to the business of restoring Italian football's reputation amid a second major match-fixing scandal in six years. He talks of the impossibility of living "without love" and has twice surrendered a night's sleep to walk to church buildings around Krakow.

"I open my eyes but I'm still dreaming," he said after Thursday's game. "There's great satisfaction here because everyone has put so much work into this. But Spain will go into the game as favourites."

This Italy team scored a national record 26 points in qualifying and conceded only two goals in 10 games. That was the clue to their indomitability here. Seven of Prandelli's squad went through the season unbeaten with Juventus. And Prandelli himself is now unbeaten in 15 competitive fixtures.

At the heart of the revival, though, after their first-round exit at the last World Cup has been greater spontaneity. "We started off with the idea of involving the players in just how we would play. Many of them felt the time had come to play - I won't say a different type of game, because in football there is nothing new - but something else," Prandelli said before the opening game. "Given that I have quality midfielders I felt we should play to our strengths, that means playing a much more attacking game."

Part of that shift was adopting a bold approach with Balotelli, pushing him into the No 9 position and encouraging him to attack through the middle. That paring down of Balotelli's talent yielded both goals against Germany and revived a tradition of Italian centre-forward play. "A star is born" shouted Gazzetta dello Sport, whose cartoonist had offensively portrayed Balotelli clinging to Big Ben, King Kong-like.

"He was excellent, like the entire team. I really believe that a team needs to have an idea to the way they play, and he really subscribed to this style," Prandelli said. The day after the penalty shoot-out win over England, Prandelli made his second nocturnal pilgrimage: a seven-mile walk, rather than the 13-mile trek that followed their emergence from a tough group. This time the coaching staff set off at 4am. We can only guess at the effect on the players - they may just think Prandelli is crackers - but there is no mistaking the esprit de corps. "I tried to speed up the process. You need time to rebuild a team, but in Italy there is no time," Prandelli said, referring perhaps to the shame cast by the betting scandal as much as high expectations. "I needed to rebuild the side, but my players had the desire to reach these targets." Again and again the positivity: "We've always tried to play football. That is our strength. When we started on this journey we were convinced we could be a 'team'. Balotelli is unique, a modern striker, atypical if you will.

"He's very strong physically, and can fight for the team, but is always there when called upon in the penalty area." Pirlo talked of Italy's "best performance of the tournament - a piece of art".

In Warsaw, neutrals felt Italy reclaim their old glamour, from a time before England's Premier League made "excitement" its big selling point and Spanish football surpassed both with the new Clasico opera, featuring Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

Italian football was rendered cool and clever again in Warsaw. Yet only days before the tournament a starting full-back, Domenico Criscito, had to be withdrawn from the Azzurri squad after being questioned during a raid on the team's Coverciano training ground. A tortured soul arrives in Sunday's final. But they hide it well.