The issue with our Twitter-browsing, multi-journalist following and multi-publication reading culture is that when a particular interesting quote or statistic is discovered by one news source, you can bet that you’ll hear it over and over again, from every single source you have. Italy’s 2-1 win over Germany last night lent itself to quite a few of these; from the repeated “Pirlo peerless” quote (bet whoever came up with that is seriously smug), via the almost inevitable cry of “WHY ALWAYS HIM?” when Mario Balotelli scores a goal, to the incredible statistic that Germany have not beaten Italy in a competitive game for 50 years, last night saw the publications all unite in their use of clichés. Well, that, and in their surprise, because, boy, no-one saw this result coming.

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