Spain dared to believe that celestial forces were working in their dressing room after that extraordinary recovery against Yugoslavia in which they scored twice in injury time to reach the quarter-finals. But their dreams ran into the hard reality of a French team that has developed more gears and range in the two years since they won the World Cup.
Despite some splendid football from the Spanish, highlighted in breathtaking breaks from deep involving Raul, Alfonso and Pedro Munitis, not yet established enough to drop his forename, the French seemed always to have an edge.
They also had most of their players performing at their peak, and when that is the case there are few sides in the world who can contain them. Some, of course, will always have a head or shoulder advantage on team mates and inevitably one of them was Zinedine Zidane.
Zidane, one of those allowed to put his twinkling feet up while the reserves contested the final group game against Holland, was in absolutely majestic form, playing like a man who had been denied a touch of a football for six months.
His first serious involvement was a weaving crossfield run which should have ended in something more spectacular than Christophe Dugarry's cross into touch and from there, he simply got better.
Thierry Henry, who in horseracing terms has improved a stone since joining Arsenal, twisted in and out of three defenders as casually as though he were dribbling round cones on the training field, even if his finishing shot was off target. And when he found himself getting little joy from Abelardo, he came deep to collect the ball and get a running start on the Spanish defence.
Working magnificently behind the scenes were Youri Djorkaeff and Didier Deschamps. The latter claims that he needs to express only 50% of his talent for Chelsea but there was no doubt here that, in managerspeak, he was giv ing 120%. Yet even his display was eclipsed by that of Djorkaeff, for whom a magnificent winner was simply an embellishment.
How different these quarter-finals have been from those at Euro 96. Then, the knockout stages produced a series of matches in which the majority of teams played dreary, cautious, almost miserly football, seemingly developing a Leicester-style fondness for penalty shoot-outs.
Four matches then were decided by shoot-outs, with even the final decided by the so-called golden goal - an inappropriate description as it normally separates teams who provide nothing but dross.
Here, the football has become even richer since the best teams claimed their places in the last eight, seemingly determined to make any artificial means of deciding the games redundant. Extra time looked a near-certainty here when Raul stepped up to take his penalty, but in this case the extra half-hour would only have been a result of both teams' rampant ambition, rather than their negativity.
Spain's last-gasp "penalty" looked generous in the extreme after Munitis went down from the tiniest of connection from Lilian Thuram.
In truth France played not only like men who are world champions but who do not believe they can be beaten here. It is a growing feeling here.
Their two goals, Djorkaeff's and the remarkable free-kick from Zidane, were as good as we have seen in the tournament. It will take an exceptional side to deny them the trophy on Sunday.
