10 things we learned from Euro 2012

1. Spain WERE boring… until the final

There was much debate in the build-up to the final about whether Spain were boring. On one side were those who argued that playing without a striker meant they lacked penetration. That they were control freaks who were keeping the ball away from the opposition, without actually trying to score. On the other were those who were hypnotised by their endless passing triangles and technical quality. Was their football exciting to real supporters or just to the International Council of Pass Statisticians?

You are feeling sleepy... veeeeery very sleepy

After the final those admirers of Spain’s play felt vindicated and pointed to their demolition of Italy as evidence for the fact they were an adventurous and exciting team. In fact, the opposite is true. The final did indeed show us what this Spanish team were capable of... this wasn’t the Spain the people said were boring.

Yes they started the final without a recognized striker, but this was not the real issue, the use of a 'false 9' has proved successful for other teams. The issue was that they did not show enough attacking intent, preferring to hold possession, rather than pushing players into goal scoring positions and attempting the tricky final pass.

Ok guys, let's keep the ball in here for 90mins

A lot of criticism of Spain because given the wealth of playing resources at their disposal they were surely capable of more. With players like Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas, Torres, Silva, Pedro, Navas, Llorente and Mata in their squad surely they would produce entertaining attacking football. In fact this 'golden generation' had only scored 10 goals in the 9 knock out games the played during their tournament wins before Sunday’s final. Their conservative team selection and playing style has meant this is a team that was admired by all for their ruthless efficiency, but not universally loved.

It is hard to criticize Del Bosque given winning is the main concern of most supporters. Nevertheless, some more clinical finishing from Croatia and Portugal would have eliminated them from the tournament, after unimpressive performances where their ambition to win was questionable. 

I'm not crying... I just have some hair gel in my eyes

In the final the team sheet was the same but the philosophy was totally different. Maybe the team had listened to the criticism and decided that it was time to show the world what they could do?

Xavi was freed to move higher up the pitch, and the tempo of the passing in midfield was far quicker. Fabregas was making the runs of a striker in behind the Italian defense. Their second goal came from a blistering penetrating run from their left back Jordi Alba. Suddenly instead of being 30 yards from goal and only have having backwards or sideway options, the Spanish players had forward passes available to them. 

This was even more evident with the introduction of Torres and Pedro but it showed that it’s not a formation (in this case 4-6-0) that’s defensive, but the style of play, the attitude and the movement of the players within that system. At half-time in the final Italy had actually enjoyed the majority of the possession, but Spain had two goals. Finally they had found the right balance between possession and penetration.

What's going on, they're actually trying to score?!

Having won the final and won their 3^rd successive tournament the debate has started as to whether this Spain team is the greatest international side ever. While I believe it’s almost impossible to make this cross-era ‘greatest’ deduction in any sport, we can certainly say that winning 3 major tournaments in a row makes Spain worthy of being part of the discussion.

Their most obvious challenger to the title of greatest ever has to be the Brazil teams of 1958-70, which won 3 world cups in 12 years, with extraordinary style and panache. They also and legendary playing squad that included two of the greatest players in the history of the game, Garrincha, considered the best dribbler in history, and Pele, generally considered one of the games best ever players.

I can't believe it, they all think Spain are better than us!

Comparing between eras is almost impossible for many reasons, because of the changes that have occurred in the game. For example, Spain are helped by changes in the laws such as the liberalization of the offside rule and much stronger protection from referees. While Pele was kicked out of the 62 and 66 world cups, Spanish players are very quick to show when they have been fouled, and referees very quick to discipline opposing players.

Don't worry lads, we might be small be we are mighty

We can of course focus on pure achievements and the '58 Brazil team achieved the unique feat of being the only South American team to win a World Cup on European soil. Becoming the first European team to win a World Cup on South American soil in 2014 would go a long way towards achieving parity with that legendary side. If they do it, let’s hope they do it in style.

2. Germany should stick to Blitzkrieg

Despite all the promise and all signs pointing to this being their year, once again Germany came up short. Having won all 10 games in qualifying, all 3 games in the 'group of death' and dominated Greece in the Quarter finals, the signs were good for a first tournament win since Euro ‘96.

Remember the German Kuntz?

Unfortunately for them, when it really mattered, instead of playing to their strengths against Italy in the semis, the Germans adapted their game plan to deal with the opposition threat. To be fair, Joachim Low is very tactically astute manager, and having seen Pirlo dominate against England, it was understandable that he put an extra body in midfield to deal with Italy’s diamond.

Stay close guys, we need to keep it tight

However, by bringing in Tony Kroos for Thomas Muller, and shifting Mesut Ozil to an inside right position, Germany lost their width. And against a diamond midfield, exploiting the spaces available in wide areas is usually key to attacking penetration. 

While Kroos was at least able to maintain position goalside of Pirlo (unlike Rooney in the England-Italy QF), he didn’t get close enough to him. And with Ozil having almost zero defensive mentality Germany’s right flack was open for Chiellini to exploit, which led to Italy’s first goal.

Me defend? Come on seriously?

Germany looked far more fluent, energetic and dynamic in their quarter final against Greece with a front 3 of Reus, Klose and Schurrle. Switching them with Kroos, Gomez and Podolski didn’t really cause Italy any problems. 

After getting dumped out of Euro 2004 without winning a single match, Klinsman and Lowe transformed the German team by introducing their current dynamic attacking style. Klinsman based this tactic shift on the basis that German culture involved being confident, attacking at pace, and looking to overwhelm the opposition with the power and speed of their attacks. 

Sharp dress sense for an attractive playing style

If Lowe had stuck to this approach, things might not have been different for Germany, but at least they would have asked more questions of Italy. A coach can only do so much however, and Lowe could not legislate for Mats Hummel’s only bad 45 mins of the tournament, and Balotelli’s best 45mins of his career.

Seriously, whoever stole my shirt is dead

3. If you're good enough, you're young enough

Theodoros Zagorakis in 2004, Zinedine Zidane in 2006, Diego Forlan in 2010. In Euro 2012 the class act was another golden oldie, Andrea Pirlo.

In a world where managers typically favour powerful destructive players deep in their midfield, Pirlo offered command of the midfield zone through intelligence and technique. The two best passing teams in this tournament made the final, and while Alonso, Busquets, Xavi, Marchisio and De Rossi all played well at various points in the tournament, it was Pirlo who was the most consistently brilliant. He was at the heart of everything good Italy did, orchestrating the play like a classical conductor.

Nice try... see you later lads

There are two ways of minimising the impact of a deep-lying playmaker like Pirlo. Either you ask someone to stay tight to him, like Germany did, or you drop your defense so deep that there is little space for him to play his long passes into, like England did. In the end Germany failed to keep him quiet and England ended up so deep they were rarely able to threaten the Italian goal.

Although imperious in technique Pirlo’s game is naturally distrupted when a high energy player is put in his zone. A perfect example would be Sir Alex Ferguson’s use of Ji-Sung Park again him in Manchester United’s 4-0 victory against Milan in the Champion’s league. Park was always close to Pirlo when Milan were on the ball, but also was able to use his energy to drive past him when United were on the attack, thus exposing Pirlo’s lack of mobility.  

Now this is tight marking

Judging by the first 15 minutes of the England-Italy Quarter Final it seemed Roy Hodgson had tasked this role to Wayne Rooney, with assistance from strike partner Danny Welbeck. It was surprising to see such a lack of defensive discipline from Rooney, given that his willingness to make sacrifices for the team were what made him such a great player, and made the 2006-08 Manchester United team so successful. 

I wish I was on a nice beach somewhere

To a certain extent Rooney was clearly lacking fitness after a grueling pre-tournament holiday to Las Vegas. But also since the departure of Ronaldo to Real Madrid, Rooney has become the ‘main man’ at United. He has shouldered a greater goal scoring burden, but potentially to the detriment of his all round tactical contribution. Is it poor lifestyle choices, is it the lack of Sir Alex’s hairdrier or maybe after a long hard season is it tired legs? Whatever it is, Rooney still hasn’t made his mark on a tournament since Euro 2004, despite England managers regularly building their teams around him.

  

4. Team cohesiveness is as important as individual quality

Both the Italians and the Germans have managed to shed their image of being negative and lacking flair, while still maintaining their organization, efficiency and ruthlessness. The Spanish also showed how important club connections could be in driving a successful international team, in a style familiar to viewers of Spanish football. 

Were the Dutch very Dutch? If you associate Dutch football with the ‘Total Football’ of the 70s, then certainly not. If however you associate them with over inflated egos and a lack team unity then this was certainly typical Holland.

Talk to the hand Bert, this is more like Total Crap

There was much criticism of the Dutch playing style during World Cup 2010, especially after the final, where their primary tactic was to physically unsettle the Spanish. Unless you’re Johan Cruyff, it was difficult to criticize a team that reached the World Cup final. But even in the World Cup they failed to find any true attacking fluidity given the wonderful array of attacking talent at their disposal.

The system their manager Bert van Marwijk preferred was a ‘pure’ 4-2-3-1 rather than the evolved 4-4-1-1 which becomes a 4-2-3-1 as the wingers push on. The idea behind playing 2 very defensively minded central midfielders (Marc van Bommel and Nigel De Jong), is that it allows more attacking freedom to the front four, and strong protection for what is individually a weak defense.

Defensive midfield play the Dutch way

The problem however is that it plays into the mentality of players such as Arjen Robben, who often show little desire to track their opposing full back into the final third. Secondly a purely destructive and cynical central midfield meant their team lacked any cohesiveness, it was almost a back 6 and a front 4. While individual brilliance can sometimes compensate, it often isn’t enough.

As Arrigo Sacchi said, "Today's football is about managing the characteristics of individuals, and that's why you see the proliferation of specialists. The individual has trumped the collective. But it's a sign of weakness. It's reactive, not pro-active."

Yes I'm talking to you Robben, Van der Vaart and Sneijder

Of course Sacchi is a devotee of universality and an heir to the Total Football philosophy believing that if player can operate in multiple positions this increases the effectiveness of the team. 'Attack as a team and defend as a team' is the mantra that, through the influence of Dutch masters at Barcelona, we see in Spain’s play. 

While it is often difficult to convince to today’s star players to sublimate themselves to a team philosophy, van Marwijik clearly decided this would be impossible with characters such as Robben, van der Vaart and Sneijder. Van der Vaart, as in the 2010 World Cup, mostly featured from the bench, and when finally given a start in the final group game against Portugal showed why he couldn’t be trusted positionally in a deep midfield role, leaving Holland lacking defensive shape without the ball. 

A potential solution to the midfield conundrum could have been Kevin Strootman, who is the type of box-to-box player who offers a balance between defense and attack. Unfortunately while Robben kept doing his same trick of running into a crowd and not passing to anyone, and Afellay did… well  nothing, Strootman didn’t get a single minute in the tournament. 

Once again a Dutch team fell short because it wasn’t able to find the cohesiveness to bring out the best from their individual attacking talents… not very Total Football, but still typical Holland.

5. England can be disciplined

Although many lamented England’s inability to maintain possession of the football, and were totally outclassed by Italy in the quarter finals, they at least found some discipline in their game. 

A pleasant surprise was the intelligent and mature performances of Steven Gerrard, who we are more used to tearing around the pitch looking to produce a Roy of the Rovers style moment. Maybe is was the captain’s armband or maybe it was the realisation that 2014 might be his last chance to prove he can play with Frank Lampard.

Finally I get to be captain!

The problem for England was that they were so disciplined that they ended up lacking fluidity in attack. 

There was a lot of criticism directed at Roy Hodgson’s tactics, especially the formation but in reality there was little variety in tactical shape across the tournament. Apart from Italy’s opening game against Spain we didn’t see any 3 man defenses, and Italy provided the only use of a diamond midfield. Otherwise we saw variations on the same theme, i.e. 4-4-2, 4-4-1-1, 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1. 

While England were strongly critised for playing a 4-4-2, theirs wasn’t a whole world away from the 4-2-3-1 that seems the current fashion in European football. The problem was England rarely played high enough up the pitch, and their transition from defense to attack broke down too early for the wingers to move into advanced positions, or their 2nd striker to link with the midfield and influence the game.

Many in the press lamented England’s inability to produce a player with Pirlo’s qualities and England’s general lack of ability to retain possession. It should be noted however that in Paul Scholes England did have a player of Pirlo’s class but he was never given a prominent position in the England team and retried after Euro 2004. 

Enough said...

Though not in the same class as Pirlo, Michael Carrick is another player who possess a superb range of passing and a very sharp footballing brain. While he doesn’t have the ability to dictate a game’s tempo - in the mould of Pirlo, Scholes or Xavi - international tournaments are typically always played at the moderate tempo that suits Carrick’s passing game. His exclusion was a huge loss for England, especially when Parker and Gerrard clearly struggled to last 90 or 120 mins.

If England are going to do a better job of controlling games and bringing more out of their powerful attacking playings then utilizing players like Carrick and Jack Wilshire will be crucial.

6. A great individual needs a great team

Arguably the strongest player going into this tournament was Cristiano Ronaldo but once again it proved beyond him to lift Portugal to victory. The Portugese defense was excellent through the tournament, their midfield was reliable and focused, especially the highly effective Joao Moutinho. But this wasn’t the Madrid team with whom Ronaldo plundered 60 goals from 55 games, and it showed how important team mates are in making individuals shine.

While Nani was bright on the right wing, Portugal lacked a playmaker in the mould of Mesut Ozil, or a striker of the class or Karim Benzema or Gonzalo Higuain. Even so, while Ronaldo was quiet against Germany and poor very Denmark, he produced a masterful performance against Holland and a wonderful headed goal against the Czechs.

In the same way Messi has as thus far failed to bring his Barcelona form to Argentina, Ronaldo gets a lot of criticism for his international performances. In both cases the criticism is slightly unfair since in both cases the players around them are weaker and their international teams are less cohesive due to lack of time playing together. However, despite falling short of many people’s expectations his majestic performances this year make Ronaldo a deserving candidate for the Ballon D’Or this year.

Oh please not Messi again!

7. BBC’s coverage needs a revamp

This was the first tournament in living memory the BBC’s coverage was probably worse that ITV’s

The thought of having to listen to Hansen go through his usual repetoir of “world class”, “mental strength”, “pass and move”, “into feet” and “mugnificent” during the Premier League season is already filling me with dread.

Shearer was “magnuficent” in his role as the boring man in the pub who generally states the obvious in a very mundane dreary way, and “at the end of day” uses far too many clichés. Dixon is clearly a smart chap but his style means he’s better suited to helping people with insomnia. Martin Keown managed to pull off the impossible by being less insightful than Mark Bright, but they both came a long way short of winning the title for the worst punditry in tournament history. That title has to go to the one and only Mark Lawrenson.

Please someone save me from these morons

‘Lawro’ has clearly lost any passion he ever had for football, or just life in general. He seemed utterly disinterested for most of the tournament, like this was a schoolboy tournament, like he was the greatest footballer of all time and commentating on the Euros was beneath him.

To distract him from his boredom of having to watch and analyse the football he attempted to break the record for the number of sarcastic comments made in a 90-minute period. Maybe I’m being harsh and actually someone has threatened the life of Lawro’s kids if he makes a single positive comment on TV, and if this is the case I’m confident they would have been freed after the tournament.

I could do better than this lot...

While Adrian Chiles seems to be equally disinterested in the actual football, at least he seemed to be genuinely excited at the chance to stoke up a fight between Roy Keane and Patrick Viera. Comments such as "your feelings for Ronaldo are as close as you would ever get to man love, aren’t they Roy?" provided mild amusement, and many of his jokes were so bad that they were actually bizarrely entertaining. Watching Keane try and control himself from laying into Chiles was amusing in itself. 

Seriously Chiles, how did you get this job?

The other ITV pundits were equally refreshing. Carragher was outspoken, although barely comprehendible at times. His regular use of the word ‘caretaker’ in discussing the England captaincy was a highlight of the tournament. Martinez, Viera and Southgate offered insightful views from those at the top end of the game. Of course we still had to put of up Andy Townsend, who insisted on referring to England as “we”… you played 70 times for Ireland Townsend, you are not one of us and never will be.

Unfortunately for ITV viewers generally feel more comfortable in the hands of the public service broadcaster and of course don’t like adverts. For this reason the BBC’s coverage of the final managed to attract 6 times more viewers than ITV.

8. International football still has an important place

While club football clearly dominates and standard between club teams and international teams is growing, an international tournament generates interest like no club competition can. England’s penalty shoot-out against Italy was watched by 23.2 million viewers in England, almost half it’s entire population. No club game can come close to matching that, nor match the solidarity felt within a country in support of their national team.

While clubs and their profiteering owners are happy to undermine international football, it still clearly holds importance with players and supporters alike. Unfortunately for English fans there is no sign of the Premier League making the changes required to help the national team perform, such as reducing the number of teams to 18 or introducing a mid-season break.

9. 16 teams makes for a great tournament

Euro 2016 will be the first tournament to feature 24 teams, so this might be the last great Euros from first game to last. 

Increasing the number of teams makes sense for UEFA’s pockets, since it will mean 20 extra matches at the finals, and a certainty of qualification for the big nations, with their large TV audiences. But quantity in this case certain won’t help with quality. 

I'm not listening to you, I want more games and that's that

The Euros arguably produce a better quality tournament than the World Cup, and one of the key reasons for this is that matches are highly competitive from day one. In this tournament the last day of the group stages was a fascinating battle, often with all four teams in with a chance of qualification. 

If the 2016 format is the same as the 1986-94 World Cups where 16 of the 24 teams qualified for the knockout stages, then with the inclusion of 8 weaker teams, the group stages could simply become a long series of warm-up matches. 

This could also impact the later stages as teams often perform better when challenged early to produce heavyweight performances. Hopefully UEFA can find a solution or Euro 2012 could be the last great tournament.

10. And finally… can we please have some technology!

While it is fair to say the extra officials can only help in the decision making process there were still too many crucial mistakes made in this tournament. 

In a sport where such fine margins decide matches it is frustrating when the officials make mistakes and affect the outcome of matches. It is a positive step that, against Platini’s wishes, FIFA have finally approved goal-line technology for use in top-level matches. 

Hmm let me have another look at that

But goal-line decisions are very rare. We had one big goal-line controversy in this tournament when John Terry cleared Marko Devic’s shot off the line, but it turned out that justice was actually once, since Devic was offside in the build-up. 

The true solution to the problem isn’t the use of complicated hawk-eye systems or magnets in the ball but simply using the existing technology and let the officials have access to the video evidence. While many worry this would break up the flow of the game but football isn’t a non-stop game and the ball is typically only in play for around 60 of the 90 minutes during a match. 

In critical incidents like penalties, red-cards and goal-line decisions, in the time the players are arguing with the referee the viewers at home (and potentially an extra official) often already know what the correct decision should be. 

Video tech has certainly helped the integrity of the result in many other sports and it’s time football followed suit.