BORDEAUX, France -- After just about doing enough to decide Germany's latest penalty shootout victory, man of the match Manuel Neuer also said enough to describe it all.
"It was a war for my nerves," the goalkeeper stated. "I've never seen such a thing before."
It was that epic, that testing. Germany won 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Bordeaux, ensuring they still haven't lost a shootout since their first against Czechoslovakia at Euro '76. Neuer was right; we've never seen them win a shootout like this, one in which there were nine rounds.
Germany remarkably missed three penalties, more than they have squandered in all other international tournaments combined -- in both normal play and shootouts -- over that 40-year span. As a crestfallen Gigi Buffon said, for Italy to have been given that chance and still lose was "inexplicable."
This was certainly a shootout that was hard to keep track of and equally hard to distill into one big moment that can explain victory. The psychological advantage and momentum changed at least six times, bringing the emotion -- and, sometimes, the ball -- to ever greater peaks.
After a match of such minimalism, this was genuinely the shootout that had it all; the basic binary nature of a penalty exploded into different angles.
The real drama started with the third spot kick. Lorenzo Insigne and Toni Kroos had so expertly finished but those two players did not set the tone.
That was as good as it got and we would soon see the worst. Antonio Conte had brought on Simone Zaza for Giorgio Chiellini in the last minute of extra-time, with penalties obviously in mind.
But the forward could not repay his manager's faith. As Zaza began his run-up, he began to rapidly lift his knees to his chest as if dancing, in what was one of the most farcical approaches a player could devise.
Given the way his legs were moving, there seemed only one possible outcome and so it was that the ball skied well over the bar. The Germans celebrated, and given the way these things usually go, you could have been forgiving for thinking it was now a foregone conclusion. It was anything but.
Thomas Muller stepped up and, for the second time in three months after his effort in the Champions League semifinal for Bayern Munich against Atletico Madrid, saw his penalty stopped.
Momentum was back with Italy. Andrea Barzagli scored, before Mesut Ozil increased the advantage of the Azzurri by hitting the post. It was his second spot-kick miss of the tournament after a failed effort in the Round of 16 against Slovakia.
At 2-1 up with just two penalties left each, Italy were on the brink. Scoring the next penalty would surely prove too much. Graziano Pelle had a big opportunity to make himself the hero, and it evidently went to his head.
Pelle gestured to Neuer as if he was going to dink it down the middle, Panenka-style, only to change his mind... and tamely send it yards wide. It was as farcical an effort as Zaza's.
Julian Draxler roared back to make it 2-2 and then Leonardo Bonucci walked up for his second penalty of the night. He had scored Italy's equaliser in normal time, cancelling out Ozil's 65th-minute goal. But now Neuer had something to react to, a prior example from which to work.
Bonucci had to decide whether to put it in the same place. That was where Neuer really earned his money and his praise: "I could not be influenced by our misses," the goalkeeper said. "I had to concentrate on my work, and try to read my opponent."
Bonucci blinked first. He put his effort in the other direction -- to Neuer's right -- and the goalkeeper's right hand pushed it away.
With only the final kick of the fifth round remaining, it all seemed set up for Bastien Schweinsteiger to surely win it with a symbolically well-taken penalty. But he sent it yards over the bar, an effort reminiscent of Roberto Baggio's miss in the 1994 World Cup final.
This was uncharted territory; Germany had never missed so many penalties in one decade, let alone one shootout. But it was just at that point, though, that things started to straighten. The next six takers -- Emanuele Giaccherini, Mats Hummels, Marco Parolo, Joshua Kimmich, Mattia Di Sciglio and Jerome Boateng -- all scored.
The Italians even seemed to have discovered a pattern. Their sixth, seventh and eighth penalties all went down the middle, as if they had finally noted Neuer's willingness to commit. The goalkeeper even made a note of this to himself.
"All who scored for Italy scored in the middle of the goal, and that speaks for itself," Neuer said.
What went before, then, made it inexplicable in the ninth round that Neuer didn't stay on his line but more so that Matteo Darmian didn't go central. But that's often the case when a pattern develops: It becomes a question of who breaks first.
Just as he did with Bonucci, Neuer didn't. When Darmian gambled that the goalkeeper might and sent his effort right, the German shot stopper was there to push it away.
"We didn't have clear enough heads," Buffon admitted later.
The 18th penalty fell to Jonas Hector, who had never been in this situation before. He scored; the ball squirming through Buffon's hands. Germany had done it again, although not in a way we'd ever associate with them. This was not focused assurance. It was chaotic uncertainty.
"You can't rely automatically on history, that Germany will advance in a penalty shootout," Neuer said at the end.
They did, but they've never missed like this before. They've never suffered so much in a shootout and, given the doubt that could create, it might mean we do see this again.
Neuer had better be prepared.