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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| What's going on, they're actually trying to score?! |
Having won the
final and won their 3rd 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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."
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
