The Round Football Column 07.28.08: 162nd Edition – Euro 2008 Special
Posted by on 06.27.2008
14 teams have fallen and now we’re down to the final two teams of UEFA Euro 2008. Cesc Fabregas, Michael Ballack, Fernando Torres and Miroslav Klose are just four of the stars hoping to shine in Vienna. Thoughts, one click away.
Euro 2008 has been an incredible tournament so far and now we're down to our final game.
So then, after a tournament of shocks, twists and drama, we've come to the final that the bookies predicted. The two pre-tournament favourites will arrive in Vienna on Sunday knowing that they've reached the premier game in European international football. The World Cup is the pinnacle, but this isn't far behind and in terms of standard it's just as high. The gloss of Argentina and Brazil is missing, as is the famous gold trophy, but aside from that the European Championships is pretty much as big as it gets. To sum up, Sunday's final is big time. This is what it's all about.
This is a snippet of how the two finalists reached Sunday's showpiece:
The debate on Cesc Fabregas' inclusion was beyond a joke after the Italy game, so I don't know what category it comes into now. It's crazy to say about a player who's only started one game out of five, but he really is one man-of-the-match performance away from being the player of the tournament. He had a goal and an assist in the first game, put Spain in control against Italy and on Thursday against Russia he produced one of the best individual performances seen in 2008. The space he found, his general passing and the magical weight of those two assists were just sublime, and David Villa's injury may well be an extremely surprising blessing in disguise.
Torsten Frings will need to be fully recovered and ready to produce the performance of his life if he's going to stifle Fabregas in this form. Michael Ballack is a great impact player, but his effect in that area of the pitch is usually very minimal. Frings may have to be even more disciplined than usual, while Hitzlsperger may have to use his hammer of a left-peg from 45-yards out instead of 20.
This will put even greater significance on Podolski, Klose, Ballack and the rejuvenated Schweinsteiger, because their use of the ball and general impact will be the only chance Germany have of lifting the trophy on Sunday. Their defensive players don't have the form or confidence to shackle the Spanish attack like Italy annoyingly did last Sunday. Surely Joachim Low will know that his players can't hold a 0-0 until penalties. For the sake of the game, we're all hoping he appreciates that and tries to win it in attack.
The problem is that the Germans don't look like they've got enough class to really trouble Spain on Sunday. It's so easy to look at their luck in the semis, the way they crawled through a joke group and their illustrious yawn-tastic history, and assume they will sneak a victory on Sunday. However, their unremarkable progression this summer is very reminiscent of their run to the 2002 World Cup Final. Class (and Ronaldo) won the day there, and if Spain don't bottle it in Vienna they'll smile as much as Brazil did in 2002.
That moody old dude Luis Aragones will just have to hope that Fernando Torres learns how to hit a barn door.
