On Sunday night I had the pleasure of joining a crowd of Spanish and Dutch nationals and watching the World Cup final, wearing my finest red and yellow top in support of Spain. With the time difference the game didn’t kick off until 1.30am, but there was so much excitement in the air that tiredness never even came into the equation.

There followed two incredibly nerve wracking hours with much chanting and singing (with it consistently amusing me that the strongest Dutch chant was always “Olé Olé Olé”).

Anyway, I’m sure everyone knows now that Spain have won the World Cup for the first time, thanks to an excellent goal from Andrés Iniesta at the very end of the second half of extra time. The Spanish contingent went loco and I attempted to capture some of that excitement on my new camera. So I present a short picture diary of the most Spanish night in Phnom Penh imaginable, viva España!

Feliz pueblo español en Phnom Penh!

Click on photos to enlarge

And in case you missed the goal that ended nearly two hours of heart-stopping anticipation, you can check it out in the video below. I can only imagine the scenes in Spain – the country must have gone proper mental!

Update: every time I find this video it gets taken down by FIFA a little while later. So I’ve taken a copy of it and uploaded it to Vimeo, but made it private on Vimeo. Hopefully they don’t find my lowly blog and send me a DMCA take-down notice…