EURO: DON'T BLAME RONALDO..

Last night, Cristiano Ronaldo took seven shots.

None were on target. He sprayed a flurry of free-kicks high and wide, and thundered a last-minute chance of glory into the Donetsk sky.

Of course, the post-match analysis focused on the shot he didn't take.

Ronaldo was due to take Portugal's fifth penalty in the shoot-out against Spain.

It never got that far, and he was reduced to a watching brief as Euro 2012's supposed one-man team went out without that one man having his say.

So what happened? Why didn't he go earlier? Did he want the glory shot? Did he bottle it?

Or maybe he never took his penalty because his team-mates weren't good enough. And the blame landed squarely at Ronaldo's inactive feet.

Criticising Ronaldo's reluctance to have a shot is like accusing Peter Andre of failing to exploit his own children for fame (true, that simile needs some work).

ED is no mathematical genius, but by its reckoning Spain scored four penalties out of five. Two Portuguese takers failed, meaning that even if Ronaldo had taken and converted his, they would still have lost.

Yes, you could argue that putting your best penalty takers pumps your team up and deflates the opposition - but then you have your weaker players going in the highest-pressure situations at the end. Swings, roundabouts.

And in any case, Bruno Alves is a decent penalty taker and his shot was close to unsaveable - he just missed, as Ronaldo might have done (and did for Real Madrid against Bayern).

Fundamentally Portugal's issue was that two of them did not convert. That was nothing to do with Ronaldo, and no sequencing order can cover for bad penalties.

Who was due to go fifth for England against Italy? ED has heard separate reports naming Glen Johnson and Joe Hart - we must be told definitively, so we know who to blame for our exit.

In any case, the pointless Ronaldo controversy obscured a far greater snafu, when Alves ambled up, only to hear a yelp from Nani, who trotted in front of him and stuck the ball away.

From that moment, ED felt Alves was doomed. Not remembering the correct order was a fairly hopeless error, but Nani would have been better advised just to hang back and let his mate get on with it.

The goalless draw added fuel to the theory that Spain are a little bit dull.

The first 90 minutes went by with the holders enjoying copious possession but creating almost nothing.

Pass, pass, pass, pass with no end product. Spain were content to play with themselves, with scant regard for penetration. No wonder Tiki Taka has been described as masturbatory football.

The only trouble with this notion is that Spain almost always win. If their football was as self-indulgently stultifying as the critics would have us believe, ED doubts they would be one game away from becoming the first team to win three consecutive major championships.

If Spain win the final, there's a legitimate argument that they are the greatest team in international football history. And here we are, discussing whether or not they are boring - which is, in itself, fairly boring.

Our attention span has shrunk to such an extent that we are so eager to herald new champions, a new tactical blueprint, that we simply cannot handle a period of prolonged success any more.

What worked in 2008 still works in 2012? It cannot be.

It is fashionable to blame Twitter at this point, but that medium contains enough tactics nerds to maintain serious love for Spain, especially when they employ - swoon! - a false nine.

Four years ago, they had a fit David Villa and a swaggering Fernando Torres - quite a force.

This year they have neither. Torres has stuttered, while Vicente Del Bosque's experiment with a strikerless formation and last night's dalliance with Alvaro Negredo fell flat.

Early Doors would like to see the criminally under-used Fernando Llorente get a go, but a major final is hardly the place to give him his first tournament start.

We expect Spain to play like Barcelona, but they cannot - simply because the best player in the world comes from Argentina.

When it comes to moments of incisive genius, only Andres Iniesta routinely delivers. (If Iniesta is Spain's Messi, presumably that means Xavi is their Iniesta, Xabi Alonso is their Xavi and Busquets is their Busquets.)

So who will the oddly-maligned Spanish face in the final?