At last! For so long they’ve been the team you curse because you had a crafty flutter before they faltered, now Spain are finally champions. What’s more, they did it their way. Their frustration at their successive failures never led them to lose faith in themselves, to abandon the way they want to play. They have always prized technical excellence and imaginative expression above all else, advocated fantasy above pragmatism. They always knew they were right. And now they may bask in beautiful vindication.
High-tempo virility has long been the badge English football likes to flash, but under Sven-Goran Eriksson they forsook that for set-piece opportunism, while under Steve McClaren they were plain confused. But Spain have shown that high-tempo virility is still a powerful force - but it’s just the starting point, the real trick is to build on it with precise technique and inspired creativity. Xavi’s wonderful pass to Fernando Torres, and Torres’s clever, tenacious run and exquisite finish encapsulated everything that makes Spain worthy kings of the continent.
Like Greece in 2004, this was a victory for a collective. But Spain are no machine, Xavi, Iniesta, Cesc Fábregas and Sergio Ramos no mere cogs. They are a vibrant organism, each element exuding adventure and intelligence. Their movement, speed and offensive intent make them devastating.
Their conviction did waver temporarily tonight as glory twinkled tantalisingly; Germany, ever defiant, cranked up the pressure in the last 30 minutes and Luis Aragonés withdrew Fábregas and David Silva for marginally more conservative players. Yet still Ramos, Andrés Iniesta and Marcos Senna came closer to scoring in that period than Germany. And unlike Germany - and the other great performers at these championships, Turkey, Russia, Holland and Portugal - Spain defended immaculately.
The margin of Spain’s victory tonight was the same as Greece in 2004 and, in fact, brought the tournament’s goal tally to 77 - exactly the same as in 2004. But this was an infinitely better tournament. It wasn’t about the number of goals, rather how they were scored and all the intangible stuff that went before and after them. It’s been about teams’ verve, their intent, their flow - their managers’ trust in talent and attack more than set-pieces and opportunism.
Spain exemplified all that made this tournament delightful. In addition to the inventors already mentioned, they have a holding midfielder who does so much more than hold: the Makelele role is old hat, rendered obsolete by Senna (and the likes of Holland’s Orlando Engelaar and Portgual’s João Moutinho). And this was the tournament in which managers truly embraced the belief that full-backs are the first line of attack. They must raid like Ramos (and Philip Lahm or José Bosingwa), and so we had attacking midfielders deployed in what was once a primarily defensive role (Hamit Altintop, Yuri Zhirkov, Gio van Bronckhorst). There is a real zing to this zeitgeist.
International football was supposed to be dying, fatally wounded by clubs’ superior power. The notion that teams restricted to picking players from just one fragment of a map could possibly be better to watch than the Champions League glitterati, who hoover up talent from all over the planet, seemed deeply illogical and embarrassingly unfashionable. It still is illogical, of course, but now it doesn’t seem so wrong: after a thrilling Euro 2008, hot on the heels of an exhilarating African Cup of Nations, international football suddenly seems vital again.
It’s amusing to wonder what spawned the revitalising spirit. Perhaps Michel Platini deserves some acclaim. When he acceded to the Uefa throne many questioned whether he could or would put his populist rhetoric into practice. But to an extent he has done, albeit after making the requisite pragmatic compromises. The disbandment of G14 was announced last January - to be replaced by the more egalitarian European Club Association (ECA) - and Uefa and Fifa also persuaded clubs to drop legal action seeking compensation for players injured on international duty.
Had the clubs won their case, most national associations would have been financially buggered. Instead a deal was reached and the Euro 2008, like the African Cup of nations earlier in the year, have been like joyous celebrations of the reprieve for international football. Life-affirming festivals of invigorating play, never-say-die passion and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, an almost universal shunning of gamesmanship. The managers who didn’t get into this groove - Raymond Domenech and Otto Rehhagel, most notably - flopped ignominiously.
Maybe this sounds like the sort of wishy-washy waffle spouted by flakes with flowers in their hair, and, indeed, maybe that G14 spiel is silly sophistry. Maybe the excitement of this competition was just a cyclical inevitability, a natural reaction to the constipated negativity that soiled Euro 2004 or an offshoot of the perceived romanticism of Manchester United’s Champions League triumph. Maybe it was an illusory consequence of rubbish defending; perhaps it’s just coincidental that so many managers have simultaneously decided that attack is the best form of defence. Or maybe the cool and rain of Austria and Switzerland favoured high-tempo play. Whatever, the fact remains that Euro 2008 was great fun, mainly thanks to the the spirit in which it was played, a spirit that coxed memorable displays from ingenious Spaniards as well as the likes of Andrei Arshavin, Wesley Sneijder, Deco, Luka Modric, Colin Kazim-Richards, Libor Sionko and so many more, and returned to us the unpredictable.
Infuse a three-week tournament with that spirit and you have a beautiful complement to nine-month club seasons, rather than an inconvenient chore tacked on at the end of them (or in the middle). Tournaments like this stoke our love of the game. And prove that clubs still need countries.
By Paul Doyle
Ref from guardian.co.uk
