TOULOUSE // Spain are notoriously slow starters at major tournaments. For much of their reign as the game’s dominant international team, a period that stretched from 2008 to 2014, that did not much bother them.
They lost their opening match at the 2010 World Cup they went on to win. They drew their first game as title holders at Euro 2012. It is almost as if their decorated footballers are riffing mischievously on so-called “manana culture” – putting things off until tomorrow – the stereotype that northern Europeans attach to Spaniards.
Yet as Spain embarked on their latest defence of the European championship crown, against the Czech Republic in what is a competitive Group D, they needed an emphatic first act. They got their win, eventually, but sweated for it.
They are not most people's favourites to win Euro 2016, and their last sluggish opening match, at the World Cup in Brazil, still colours the reputation of La Roja. They lost that 5-1 to the Netherlands, a trauma that pushed them towards the earliest possible exit from that competition and has taken some of the swagger from their gait.
More Euro 2016
• Andy Mitten diary: Northern Ireland's Evans brothers enjoy wide range of support
• Full coverage: Visit The National's dedicated Euro 2016 microsite
• Complete guide: Previews, fixtures, predictions and more
Skilful tournament management is about peaking at the right time, conserving energies where you can, and Spain have a great deal of expertise in managing tournaments adroitly.
Their starting line-up against the Czechs included players with a combined 18 gold medals in European Championships or World Cups between them, although the main point of pre-match interest was that it excluded the country’s most capped player, the most conspicuous trophy-lifter in the last decade of international football. Iker Casillas, Spain’s captain when they set off for France, was on the substitutes bench.
His replacement in goal, David de Gea, can now assume he is No 1 choice. The Manchester United keeper has earned that status, and ought perhaps to have been elevated to it sooner. But Vicente Del Bosque, Spain's head coach, has some strong principles of loyalty.
Casillas remained his skipper for two years after that ignominious World Cup exit, though the sight of the poor goalkeeper scrabbling around on all fours as Arjen Robben danced around him remained one of the most vivid, most replayed images of Spain’s fall from grace.
In Toulouse, it took them over 80 minutes to buck the long pattern of ordinary starts to tournaments, and before and after Gerard Pique’s late, headed goal, De Gea had made important interventions.
He produced a dexterous save from Roman Hubnik and another alert stop, in injury time, when his palms were stung by Vladimir Darida’s fierce shot.
The Czechs hardly peppered his goal, though. Rather, they played like many of Spain’s opponents tend to, with plenty of men behind the ball.
“We wanted to counter-attack,” said their manager Pavel Vrba, acknowledging that “the quality of Spain is at a higher level than ours”.
The Czechs did frustrate Spain’s princes of pass-and-move. They smothered Alvaro Morata, chosen to spearhead Del Bosque’s attack, and they put big, tall bodies in the way of shot after shot.
When Sergio Busquets, anchor midfielder, starts attempting speculative efforts from 25 yards out, as he did after half an hour of sustained Spanish possession but few clear opportunities, you sense a little desperation creeping in.
Pique's goal came as a relief. It will gee him up, too. He has spent the last two years anticipating being booed by sections of Spain's support at home matches, a puzzling phenomenon that owes a little to the public perception of Pique as rather too pro-Catalonia – his home region, where many citizens want great autonomy from the rest of Spain - and very anti-Real Madrid.
The goal was made in Barcelona, though cheered from Vigo to Valencia. Pedro, once of Camp Nou, passed to Andres Iniesta, a Barcelona player since his teens. Iniesta crossed for Barcelona-born Pique to nod past Petr Cech.
None of the Spaniards who had crossed the Pyrenees booed Pique in Toulouse. The champions are up and running, persistent rather than brilliant in their first 90 minutes. Del Bosque will hope Spain still have higher gears they can switch into.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport