Pretty good showing from Italy.
They were excellent up to the point Spain scored, but struggled quite badly after that.
Cassano-Balotelli allowed Italy to keep the ball and the held it up well to relieve pressure. Unsuprisingly, they didn't offer much penetration, since neither is really interesting in running in behind a defence.
Midfield functioned pretty well, with Motta the standout. Managing to avoid being completely dominated in this area of the pitch when Spain were playing about 43 midfielders gave Italy the platform to really compete in the game.
The back three did well, even if there were a few understandable errors caused by not having played together before and De Rossi making the sort of mistakes a midfielder is always likely to make when playing in defence (not that De Rossi didn't have a good game).
Goal was fairly preventable. Giaccherini, ideally, would have tracked Fabregas better, but it's a lot to ask of a player isn't a defender at all. The space that the ball was played into should not, to my mind, exist when you are playing with three CBs. De Rossi was possibly ball-watching slightly when Chiellini stepped out to close Silva, so wasn't shuffling back into a sweeper type position to provide cover. Tough stuff to do for a midfielder, though.
Think Italy's problems late in the game came about due to the midfield tiring after working hard to compete despite being outnumbered through the game, combined with Torres attack the space behind the defence with Spain's midfielders relatively free to pick passes due to Italy's fatigue. For that reason, I think that Nocerino probably needed to come on 10-15 minutes earlier than he did.
The slow pitch helped Italy quite a lot, I think, as it made it really tough for Spain to play with any real tempo.
Promising signs for Italy, but tough to learn much about Italy's capabilities of doing something in the tournament since playing Spain is so different to playing anyone else.