Spain, the tournament’s finest team from start to finish, were tonight crowned champions of Europe in Vienna, and rightly so. Their style has, at times, echoed the best of the Brazilian teams from the 50s to the 70s, since Pelé and co. lit up the playing field with their effortless passing and movement, and even the more recent brand of ‘total football’ as played by Johan Cruyff and his Dutch Masters of the 1970s, where the team played as a coherent unit, players filling in other positions when others broke free to attack or defend as the game ebbed and flowed.
While the Spanish victory may go down as a vindication of so many pundits’ conviction that they were tournament favourites, it stood in counterpoint to the German side’s incredible (yet, oddly believable) achievement of reaching the final. Their performance, and defeat, against a delightful Croatian side in the second game of the group stages left many thinking they would finally shrug off their recent ‘fluky’ reputation and fail to even progress beyond the group stages (having been uable to even win a game in the competition prior to this year's opening victory against Poland since football 'came home' in 1996, when they eventually ran out as winners against an unfancied Czech Republic side at Wembley).
At the end of the game, the BBC pundits reclined in their chairs and contented that tonight had been a “victory for football”, and that the Spanish side had reminded us how football should be played. So much is true, but more than this they reminded just why we love this beautiful game so very, very much.
While the Spanish victory may go down as a vindication of so many pundits’ conviction that they were tournament favourites, it stood in counterpoint to the German side’s incredible (yet, oddly believable) achievement of reaching the final. Their performance, and defeat, against a delightful Croatian side in the second game of the group stages left many thinking they would finally shrug off their recent ‘fluky’ reputation and fail to even progress beyond the group stages (having been uable to even win a game in the competition prior to this year's opening victory against Poland since football 'came home' in 1996, when they eventually ran out as winners against an unfancied Czech Republic side at Wembley).
At the end of the game, the BBC pundits reclined in their chairs and contented that tonight had been a “victory for football”, and that the Spanish side had reminded us how football should be played. So much is true, but more than this they reminded just why we love this beautiful game so very, very much.
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