Spain 1, Germany 0 in the Euro Cup championship map, in Vienna.
Interesting match on several levels. The first being that most soccer experts seemed fairly confident Germany would win. If for no other reason than … Spain never wins anything. Or hadn’t, since the 1964 Euro Cup.
But form was turned upside down. The chokers delivered. The comeback kings never came back.
Finesse overwhelmed brawn. Speed manhandled size. And Germany, the relentless force, the disciplined Mannschaft, never summoned anything remotely resembling a rally in the second half.
Oh, and this was by far the highest-visibility Euro Cup in U.S. history, aided by ESPN’s coverage of every match in the tournament. Even if the action was narrated by British Islanders with accents so thick American viewers needed subtitles.
The only goal today was a reversal of the matchups that otherwise predominated:
Spain’s one player of any size, Fernando Torres, overpowered Germany’s smallest player, left back Philipp Lahm, to score the goal on a ball rolled into the box … that Lahm should have controlled and keeper Jens Lehman should have stopped.
Torres was behind Lahm for a moment, but using his height advantage, he practically “swam” (to use an NFL pass-rushing term) over Lahm’s shoulder to get to the ball first, then lifted it just high enough to beat the onrushing/sliding Lehman.
The rest of the game was about Spain’s players — fast, quick but astonishingly runtish — beating the Germans to ball after ball, tackling with skill, breaking up German attacks before they fairly got started and, in the second half, practically conducting a clinic on how to kill a game with a 1-0 lead — continuing to move forward, continuing to pressure, holding the ball, running the Germans into the ground.
ESPN’s Scottish narrators kept remindingĂ‚Â us of Germany’s long history of comebacks, but they never got close to a goal. Indeed, they barely could keep it for more than a touch or two.
I have never seen a German team give the ball away as often as this one did today. It reminded me of the U.S. national team in the bad old days, 20 years ago, when pass after pass was aimed at no one in particular and ended up on an opponent’s foot at least half of the time.
A lot of that was about Spanish speed. The Germans never looked comfortable on the ball, and many of their passes no doubt were influenced by a quickly closing Spaniard. (And, eventually, the fear that a Spaniard might be closing quickly.)
But that didn’t account for all the errant passing. The Germans were abysmal at restarts, especially in the attacking end, failing time and again to get the ball 1) in the air and 2) around their towering teammates in front of the goal. The Germans weren’t going to score after a serious of passes in the run of play. They were too slow and lumbering, compared to the Spaniards.
Their best hopes were corners and free kicks, and their inability to put the ball in dangerous places was an absolute mystery from top-flight professionals. Perhaps the only explanation? After the opening minutes, they were so generally discombobulated that all their poise (and skill) just vanished into the hot Vienna night.
Two recurring topics in this Euro Cup:
1. The referees are horrible. OK. Let’s stipulate it. The referees are horrible. So can we stop talking about it? Bad officiating is a part of soccer. Always has been. Always will be, until perfect mechanical devices are created. From my impartial viewpoint, the refs were bad both ways, so it all evened out.
2. ESPN’s coverage left something to be desired. While soccer fans are grateful all the games were there, the network’s choice of voices was curious. Instead of using any of its American stable of soccer guys (JP Dellacamera, Eric Wynalda, Rob Stone), who are just fine, thank you, they went for the Brits.
Apparently, Euro accents allegedly confer gravitas on the proceedings. But that perceived “class” shouldn’t come at the cost of comprehensibility, as it so often did during this tournament.
Andy Gray, a Scotsman who did color commentary on about half the games of the tournament, is very, very difficult for an American to understand. I like to believe I have a fairly good sense of any accent in the English tongue, but I had dozens of “what did he say?” moments from Gray, in this tournament. Including in the final, today.
Maybe ESPN didn’t notice that when the ultra-Scottish movie “Trainspotting” was shown in the U.S. … it came with subtitles. Andy Gray needed subtitles.
Now, I’m a bit disappointed the tournament is over. Basically, it’s the World Cup — without Brazil and Argentina.
Having around the rest of the world, in the World Cup, is fun — the Africans and Asians and North Americans. But none of those guys are going to win, and we all know it.
The Euro Cup strips away the 16 spots that go to teams with no hope and gets right down to business. (Aside from Brazil and Argentina, yes.) So every game seems more interesting.
I know that club soccer is as big (perhaps bigger) in the rest of the world, but in the U.S. we like our soccer organized by polities … and now not much looks very interesting until South Africa 2010 kicks off, 23 months hence.
Maybe Spain actually can aspire to winning that, for the first time. Now that they’ve removed themselves from the World’s Biggest Underachievers club, now principally embodied by Portugal and England.
7 responses so far ↓
1 DPope // Jun 29, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Torres’ goal was a thing of beauty; matched only by the touch pass from Fabregas.
It was a solid Euro finale. It’s just too bad the Germans couldn’t produce a late goal to force extra time.
Bring on 2010!
2 Jacob Pomrenke // Jun 29, 2008 at 8:18 PM
I thought Andy Gray was phenomenal, personally.
3 Ian // Jun 29, 2008 at 9:37 PM
Gotta agree with Jacob. I just watched the game on tivo, and Andy Gray was stellar as usual. But then again, I watch Setanta way more than I should.
Germany didn’t want to win and didn’t deserve to win. Kudos to Spain.
4 Brian Robin // Jun 30, 2008 at 8:42 AM
Count me in as an Andy Gray fan. His brogue wasn’t a problem. In fact, it wasn’t an issue.
Frankly, we need more Andy Grays in this country: announcers who aren’t afraid to pull punches, who tee up underachieving players and crappy referees with knowledgeable abandon. The only one who comes to mind is Johnny Miller on golf.
Would you rather listen to Andy Gray… or ESPN’s stable of vanilla announcers who don’t add anything of substance to the proceedings?
For example, John Harkes isn’t bad on MLS games. Put him on USMNT games and he becomes a fanboy, abandoning all pretense of objectivity.
Give me more Andy Gray: one of the best things ESPN did during a stellar month of soccer telecasts.
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5 Stomper // Jun 30, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Your zing on “British Islanders with accents so thick American viewers needed subtitles” was uncalled for. Why put American narrators on the job? It is a fact that Americans have total disregard for the game.
6 Guy McCarthy // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Andy Gray’s better than Rob Stone any day, but make way for Andres Cantor and Norberto Longo (RIP) por favor.
Any list of underachievers in national team competition football should lead with England and Holland.
Their track record is mitigated somewhat by their followers’ passion for the game. Even if their teams totally sucked, it wouldn’t be a tournament without the Dutch or the English, or both. It’s no stretch to imagine thousands of Liverpool fans celebrating into the night for Torres and his performance in the final yesterday.
Honorable mention for underachieving at national team level must go to Uruguay. Before the World Cup even started, they won two straight men’s football Olympic golds in Paris ’24 and Amsterdam ’28, then hosted the first Campeonato Mundial in 1930.
Uruguay came from behind to beat Argentina in the final (4-2) in Montevideo. In addition to three straight world titles, 20 years later they came back to beat Brasil 1-2 in the 1950 final in front of some 200,000 at the recently-built Maracana in Rio de Janeiro. It was Brasil’s first time hosting and they hadn’t won jack at that point. Uruguay taught Brasil and the rest of the world how to win tournaments – at home and on the road.
Congratulations to Spain. The U.S. showing against them before the tournament is meaningless, but perhaps the lads will take something from it anyway.
Euro 2008 Bests
Best team: Turkey
Best moment: Turkey surging back each time. Pick one.
Best goal: Torres to win the title. Paul’s description of how he “swam” past a defender to beat the keeper is on the money. The goal itself wasn’t pretty, but the effort was total.
Full Disclosure: I’m biased. I picked Turkey as dark-horse favorite on June 4.
7 Damian // Jul 2, 2008 at 3:46 PM
Andy Gray-Adrian Healey was the right call for ESPN to do the final. That’s as good as ESPN has ever had to offer. Consider Andy Gray a classic cameo passing through in the night. How ESPN ever got a hold of him and lured him to fly across the Atlantic for a couple weeks to broadcast football to Americans, when there must have been plenty of similar “pundit” opportunities available to him in the UK, is beyond me.
The final provided me with my most amusing Andy Gray moments. Did anyone else notice that about two-thirds of the time Andy mentioned Spainsh midfielder Xavi over the air, the word “Little” preceded his name. And it sounds much funnier when said in a Scottish accent — “LIH-ULL.”
And then ESPN turns it over to their studio crew after the game, and that’s when you look for the clicker. To respond to another post, I have nothing against the “Auld Onion Bag,” Tommy Smyth, or Irish people. I like Irish people. I like Keano (Roy Keane). I visit their American novelty pubs often. I once hooked up with one of their lasses and stayed with her when I was visiting (albeit a Northern Ireland girl). I have no dislike for Tommy. I like Tommy’s enthusiasm for the sport, that he supports Man United, that he’s part of ESPN’s pioneering movement to televise soccer and attempt to make it relevant in the U.S. It’s just that he offers little to no insight on a game for me, many times losing the plot on what he is saying, and states the obvious. When I say his accent got him the job, it’s not that I think it was his Irish accent that got him the job. It’s that he has an accent from a foreign country where soccer is big. There is definitely a bias in the U.S. where it lends soccer credibility to Europeans and South Americans who talk soccer, no matter their background — “Well, he likes soccer and he’s English, so he must be an expert on the game.”
Spain fully deserved to win the final, controlling the Germans from the start and never letting them have much of the ball. It is one of the best possession teams in the world and it’s never a good thing to fall behind those types of teams because, not only are you chasing the game for much of the match and tiring yourself out in the process, but you have very little time with the ball to build attacking possession and you can’t sustain it so it makes it hard for your midfielders and strikers to develop a rhythm and link.
You saw that with Germany, in that it got very impatient in the 2nd half, was forcing passes forward through the middle of the pitch, trying to use passing angles and directional runs that really weren’t there. I am surprised Germany did not take their attack wider because Spain was quite content to clog the middle. Germany certainly has a height advantage where it could pump in crosses all day and take their chances with finding a head. Of course, it’s hard to do that too often when you don’t have the ball.
And so, like I said before, Holland retains its title of greatest underachievers in the world, considering the teams and world-class players it has spewed out for decades. I mean, beating Italy and France by 3 goals apiece, and then getting grossly outplayed by Russia in the quarters and losing 3-1?
(Note: Because I have heavy English allegiance, bloodlines and roots, I am not allowed to classify my lads in the “underachieving” class. Even if, privately, I may think that to be true.”)
We’ll miss the Euros, but thank goodness the World Cup is only 2 years away and we never have to wait 4 years for 1 of the only 2 international tournaments that matter.
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