OK, yes: Spain 4, Italy 0.

I’m still sick of Spain, and just because they had a nice game in the final doesn’t excuse (or make us forget) the long patches of Almost Unwatchable they gave us during the rest of their Euro 2012 campaign.

My default setting for this tournament was, “Won’t They Please Just Go Away?” And I thought I would get my wish in the semis, when Portugal led the shootout (after 120 excruciating minutes) for about 30 seconds.

So, where do these Spain guys rank in soccer history? That seems the only question being debated tonight, even as one particular international score from 2009 seems forgotten.

Even I was too young to have paid serious attention to Pele’s Brazil of the 1960s, but it remains difficult to imagine they were as annoying in their dominance as Spain and the “tika-taka” patter of little feet and short passes.

So Spain is no better than the second-best team in soccer history, and I’m not sure they should be ahead of Puskas’s Hungarians or Cruyff’s Dutch or Beckenbauer’s Germans.

Is Spain four goals better than Italy?

Of course not. The early goal (a header by a fourth-grader named David Silva) “opened up” Italy, as the soccerspeak goes, and the second goal left them even more desperate to go forward and get a goal, and they came close early in the second half.

Italy going down to 10 men for the final half hour contributed to Spain’s final two goals, too.

Spain tied Italy 1-1 in the opener of the tournament, hammered Ireland (didn’t everyone?) in the second, beat Croatia 1-0 on a late goal in the third, when Croatia were pressing for a winner, played well against France (which played badly) in the quarters, were outplayed by Portugal in the semis, and finally got it together in time to dispatch Italy.

What was amusing, tonight, was so many writers tripping over their own clips to mock those who had suggested Spain’s penchant of holding the ball while not actually threatening the goal … was just another way to kill a game. And Spain became everything wonderful and magical again.

(Soccer writers are nothing if not herd animals. If the lead dogie takes a step, all the rest follow obediently, nose to … tail.)

I wish we could have seen Germany play Spain. They would have presented a better spectacle, I think, and perhaps would have halted this tide of Spain, SPAIN, SPAIN.

And, as a Yank, we should note that the Confederations Cup, while apparently not rising to the level of “official competition” (and why it doesn’t puzzles me) in 2009 presented us with a global competition in which the United States defeated Spain 2-0 in the semifinals.

And Spain was playing its A Team, too, as this match report demonstrates: Iker Casillas, Vaxi, Xabi Alonso, David Villa, Cesc Fabregas, Sergio Ramos, Gerard Pique, Fernando Torres …

Goals by Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey, and “what’s so tough about these guys?” later, Spain’s 35-match unbeaten streak was over.

Anyway, Spain was lucky not to get the Yanks in this Euro tournament. Maybe they wouldn’t have been celebrating in Madrid last night.