Media Markt, the Spanish electronic chain, have a good deal to lose tonight at Euro 2008. The company - a sort of Iberian Dixons or Currys - have offered everybody who bought one of their plasma televisions ahead of the tournament a handsome 25% of their money back if Spain get beyond the quarter-finals. It’s the sort of business gamble they could take without too much detailed actuarial work. As everybody who can’t quite remember back as far 1984 knows, Spain never go beyond the last eight.

But, steady; what thousands of Spaniards have been seeing on their new plasma TVs, in bright, bold technicolour, looks like real gumption, a strength and confidence that might be more than two-dimensional, that might even overcome the world champions in Vienna. Spain go there on the back of maximum points from their group and a run of 19 games undefeated; Italy are there not so much via the tradesman’s entrance as through the cat flap in the kitchen door, thanks to Romania’s failure from the penalty spot, and a deflected goal that helped them beat France. Count that as a Thierry Henry own-goal, and Italy at Euro 2008 have contributed half as many strikes from their own men combined as Spain’s David Villa has on his own.

Villa-Maravilla - Villa the Marvellous - has four goals from two matches and a momentum to sustain the suggestion that once his European championship is over, his transfer fee from Valencia to elsewhere will become the subject of extended negotiation. The goals here - a hat-trick against Russia, a sang-froid finish to win the match in stoppage time against Sweden - help his profile, but Villa has not arrived from nowhere. He has regularly scored for middle-ranking clubs in Spain - Real Zaragoza and an indifferent current Valencia - and for that, says his colleague Cesc Fabregas, “he deserves the attention he is getting now”. To report that Villa is milking it would be an exaggeration, but he does carry the role of Spain’s Euro-hero rather well.

For a start, he is wearing No 7, a shirt around which there was a long, drawn-out controversy in the build-up to this tournament. Spanish’s football’s most famous No 7 is worn not by Villa but by Raul, captain of Real Madrid, leading scorer in the history of the Spanish national team and its figurehead for most of the past decade. Raul is not in Austria despite his good form of last season. He is not in Austria because the coach, Luis Aragones, has found something in Raul’s presence that is not conducive to his idea of a solid group. Do Spain miss Raul? If they lose against Italy, many will answer yes. Have they missed Raul? Not while Villa scores at a goal every 45 minutes.

So, now we’ve got Villa’s number, let’s look at his boots. He would not be the only footballer to have bespoke boots but quite a fuss has been made about the design of these. Villa asked his suppliers to have embroidered on the tongues of each boot his nickname, or the one he has answered to for long before he became Villa-Maravilla. “Guaje Villa”, they say, a sobriquet relating to his roots in the northern mining community of Asturias. They also have the name of his daughter, Zaida, stitched in white on the red leather. And on the right boot, from which most of his goals come, he has the flag of Asturias, a gold cross on a blue background; on his left, the flag of Spain. There is a soft statement behind all this needlework. It declares: this a man proud of his region and proud of his country, in equal measure. And this in a country where region matters. One or two Spanish players of recent times - at least one Basque and one Catalan - have been reluctant even to have their photographs taken with the Spain flag when they have been called up for international duty.

Sometimes Spain’s habitual underachieving at major competitions is attributed to this, the federal character of the nation. The theory seems a little farfetched if it asks us to believe that a group of professionals go on to the field in red shirts preoccupied by matters of political autonomy. What has been true of some of Spain’s recent failures to play like the sum of their talented parts is that cliques have emerged in some squads.

When all 23 players, plus Aragones, jumping about unlike a man in his 70th year, celebrated Villa’s winning goal en masse against Sweden, they declared a collective joy and the memory scrolled back to a goal Raul had scored for Spain, against Tunisia, at the last World Cup. Then, the Madrid captain had run straight to his club colleague, Michel Salgado, and they were joined by one other player in the back- slapping.

The new, all-for-one, one-for-all mantra gets repeated so often by Spain’s players that you begin sometimes to suspect an element of rehearsal about it. The togeth-erness is a big deal for Aragones, who made 10 changes to his lineup for the final group match against Greece, once Spain had already assured for themselves top place, to make sure everybody bar the third-choice goal-keeper had played his part at Euro 2008. “Luis has always made sure that, before we go out on the field, there is a good atmosphere between us,” says Villa. “Criticisms directed at him or the team make us more united, we’re a tight-knit group and confident in each other. That’s our strength.” Villa dedicated his hat-trick to Fernando Torres, his strike partner, immediately after the rout of Russia.

Liverpool’s Torres and Valencia’s Villa have formed the most effective partnership here. “We have always had that,” says Villa. “We came back from the World Cup in Germany with three goals each. Because of injuries, we didn’t play together so much in Euro qualifying. But we get on well on the field and outside it. I think we learn a lot from each other, too.” The pairing looks solid, meaning there’s no starting place for Arsenal’s Fabregas. Neither he nor any other of the reserves has yet suggested they would rather be at home, watching on a new wide-screen TV, hoping for their 25% discount to drop on the doormat.