The most prolific striker of this championship, David Villa, hobbles about, still injured. Spain’s most celebrated forward, Raul, sits at home. Their No 9, Fernando Torres, has managed a single goal in five hours of the tournament so far. So Spain would be entitled to regard this evening’s appointment with Germany with some trepidation.

If so, they barely betray it. This Spanish team need little persuading that they prepare for their first major final for almost a quarter of a century in the ascendancy, that they can approach the task with patience and confidence. The 3-0 scoreline from Thursday’s semi-final against Russia makes a handy enough touchstone for that and the nature of the victory grants them an even greater sense of momentum.

They have also found a totem, a 21-year-old who has started only one match so far here but whose impact as a substitute has grown to epitomise the zest about Spain. He is Cesc Fabregas, of Arsenal, and in the absence of the injured Villa, he should start against Germany, and might yet finish the tournament not just as its most prominent supersub but its chief protagonist.

Fabregas is the logical choice for the one enforced change to the lineup that has served Spain from the beginning of each of the four matches they needed to win. He will play at the most advanced point of a midfield that hums to the possession, passing football of the elvish trio of Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta and David Silva. Fabregas grew up in the slipstream of two of those, the Barcelona players Xavi and Iniesta, and learned his early football from the same textbook.

When he was 16, his admiration for the pair married a realisation that to advance his career he would have to make a detour and avoid them. Had Fabregas not moved to London when he did, he feared he would be watching them both from the Barcelona substitutes’ bench, as their deputy.

So it was with a certain sense of déjà vu that Fabregas joined up with the Spain squad last month. He had been given the No 10 shirt for the tournament, a hint that Spain’s commitment to a creative game would be channelled through him. It turned out that in the hierarchy of head coach Luis Aragones, Fabregas stood at number 12, that the best passer in the best passing team in English football ranked behind the four best midfielders identified by Aragones from within Spain’s La Liga. To the howls of astonishment from Ashburton Grove would be added few from across Iberia, where until this month a theory was held that, a little like Torres with Liverpool, Fabregas plays better for his club than his country.

That club, Arsenal, are still resented in some quarters for luring Fabregas to London. Barcelona, who had trained Fabregas, took a dim view of the snatch, having put the teenager through their academy, identified him as the next Xavi or Iniesta and paired him in the same youth team as Lionel Messi, the dazzling Argentinian. Fabregas had by then captured international attention, at least among the sharper-eyed scouts, when he was the outstanding footballer at the Under-17 World Cup in 2003.

Arsenal’s offer would not only be financially attractive, but it promised first-team football earlier than Barcelona could. “Cesc decided he had to go when he was 16,” Xavi remembers, “and there was a lot of competition for places in midfield at Barcelona. It has been a fantastic move for him.” Just as moving to Liverpool has been for Torres, with whom Fabregas will effectively act as partner in Spain’s attack tonight, a pair who have a combined age of just 45 but come into the game on the back of the best seasons of their careers, both in the Premier League.

If the beneficiary of Villa’s misfortune is Fabregas, the bearer of any extra pressure left by Villa’s absence is Torres, who has been substituted by Aragones in three of his four matches. A curious role-reversal has overtaken these two since the championship began: On June 10, Fabregas was the conspicuous first reserve, Torres the pin-up, Spain’s figurehead. Yet since Fabregas replaced Torres after 53 minutes of Spain’s opening group game against Russia, the Arsenal man, Spain’s 12th man, has spent more time on the field than the Liverpool man. And here’s the telling figure. With Fabregas on the pitch, Spain have scored eight of their goals; with Torres there, they have scored five. Fabregas, the midfield player, has scored once and then converted the final penalty in the quarter-final shootout win against Italy; Torres scored his only goal of the competition in the second match against Sweden.

Nobody around the Spanish squad is yet interpreting this as a crisis for Torres, though to have looked at the player’s expression once or twice when he has been withdrawn early in the second half by Aragones was to believe that Torres, author of 33 Liverpool goals in his debut season at Anfield, has felt frustrated more frequently in Spain’s red than in that of his club. Aragones advances the argument that Torres has pulled and exhausted the defences Spain have tended to overcome later in their contests. “He has worked hard and played very well,” says the manager. Privately, he gave Torres a talking-to after the first match against Russia, reminding him that he had known him since he was a teenager at Atletico Madrid, when going nearly four hours without a goal – his run for Spain – would have prompted a hysterical sense of alarm among Atleti supporters.

The Liverpool Torres would be less vulnerable to such scrutiny, say those close to him. “Fernando Torres is not only a strong player,” says goalkeeper Pepe Reina, who has become a good friend to his compatriot at Liverpool, “but a strong person as well. He has the sort of natural ability you can only be born with and he will get even better. Being at Liverpool for the past year has helped him. He won’t be nervous at all about facing Germany. I personally hope he scores the winning goal in the final. He is key for us with his movement up front and we have to find him as much as possible.”

Today that becomes Fabregas’s principal task from the start. Whenever he has come on, Fabregas has made Spain more direct. Torres ought to appreciate that. He has thrived on quick service at Liverpool, on what Aragones would describe as an English style. The coach has reservations about that style, but will be happy today to be its beneficiary.

WHO WILL MAKE HISTORY?

The European Championship has enhanced the reputation of some of football’s greatest players, ever since the first tournament in 1960, when goalkeeper Lev Yashin helped the USSR lift the trophy. Today, Cesc Fabregas or Michael Ballack will join the list of legends

Year / Final / Star player

1960 USSR 2 Yugoslavia 1 Lev Yashin (USSR)
1964 Spain 2 USSR 1 Luis Suarez (Spain)
1968 Italy 2 Yugoslavia 0 Dragan Dzajic (Yug)
1972 W Germany 3 USSR 0 Franz Beckenbauer (WG)
1976 Czechoslovakia 2 W Germany 2 Marian Masny (Cz) Czechoslovakia won 5-3 on pens
1980 W Germany 2 Belgium 1 Bernd Schuster (WG)
1984 France 2 Spain 0 Michel Platini (France)
1988 Holland 2 USSR 0 Marco van Basten (Holland)
1992 Denmark 2 Germany 0 Brian Laudrup (Denmark)
1996 Germany 2 Czech Rep 1 Oliver Bierhoff (Germany)
2000 France 2 Italy 1 Thierry Henry (France)
2004 Greece 1 Portugal 0 Angelos Charisteas (Greece)

Final duel for Big Two

CESC FABREGAS: IT’S SO HARD TO BE HUMBLE

Cesc Fabregas has plenty to be happy about, but not everybody warms to his big smile. Walking off at the Emirates last year after a goalless FA Cup tie against Blackburn, the Spaniard approached Rovers manager Mark Hughes, who recalls: ‘The young man asked me a question which was disrespectful. He asked if I had played for Barcelona and when I said yes, he shook his head and said: ‘Well, that wasn’t Barcelona football’

Others might endorse Hughes’s view that Fabregas lacks humility. The Spaniard has been known to smile and shake hands with a beaten opponent before whispering ‘loser’ as he turns away. Clearly, he follows his own rules about respect. Last week he criticised his former club for targeting his Arsenal colleagues: ‘Barça should show more respect. Arsenal never make a lot of noise [over transfers] and always try to do things properly’

MICHAEL BALLACK: IT’S SO HARD TO MAKE ENDS MEET

Property prices were the first things that caught the German’s attention when he moved to Chelsea in 2006. ‘London is extremely expensive,’ complained the £100,000-a-week midfielder. ‘It’s better to rent. My family [partner Simone, inset, and their three children] and I have found a house in Wimbledon.’ At least he grew to enjoy some aspects of life in Britain, confessing a love of fi sh and chips

Next on Ballack’s list is to shake off the tag of being the eternal runner-up. He has twice been a losing fi nalist in the Champions League, with Bayer Leverkusen (2002) and Chelsea (2008), and received a losers’ medal when he was suspended for Germany’s 2002 World Cup final defeat by Brazil. That year he also collected runners-up medals in the Bundesliga and the German Cup