Viva Espana as the ruthlessly efficient Germans finally get done

Jul 1 2008 By Richard McComb

We thought it was all over – but it isn’t yet. And for that we must say: “Muchos gracias.”

For years now, football tournaments have been bedevilled by negative tactics and an obsession with metatarsals and WAGs. It looked like the days of proper glamour football had disappeared along with the death of mullets, the demise of pocket-sized Argentinians called Diego, and the ill-advised replacement of lager and fry-ups with fruit smoothies and chicken pasta on players’ diets.

And then lo and behold, Spain, a very decent football team – that is, one whose players are capable of passing the ball, playing in both the sun and the rain, and winning a game – popped up to beat Germany in the final of the European Championships. And let’s not be coy about it, the Spaniards didn’t so much beat the Germans as annihilate them, crushing their opponents’ jaded gameplan into the turf at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna.

For once, the scoreline read: Beautiful Game 1 – Cynicism 0.

The best team, unfortunately, in fact usually, does not always win, as exemplified by the Greek’s plodding triumph in the same tournament four years ago.

But in Euro 2008, the skill and verve of the Spanish combined with a killer instinct and a robust athleticism to ensure they lifted the Henri Delaunay Trophy for the first time in 44 years. Real football, a combination of artistry and power play, is back.

Being born the year after England last lifted the World Cup, I was a little young to appreciate the scintillating skills of the Brazilians in their pomp and I have only vague memories of Holland’s total football, although that didn’t stop me and my mates trying to do the Cruyff turn with a bald tennis ball in the playground.

I contend that Argentina’s victory on home soil in 1978 remains the closest a lad of my generation has come to seeing staggeringly good football in a major competition. Since then, if truth be told, it has all been downhill. In subsequent years, Italy were always worth watching, but that was more for their composure than their fizzing artistic flair.
Why though is Spain’s victory in Austria such a great thing for sport? And isn’t our unbridled joy over Spain’s victory tainted by a less noble, darker motivation, namely a rather puerile revelling in the abject failure of the Germans?

To which one can only reply: “Of course it is! And I say, “Rejoice! Rejoice!”

One has lost count of the times when truly mediocre German football teams have progressed to the final of major competitions, often having the audacity to win them. These teams are habitually “well-drilled,” “disciplined,” and, basically, “German.”

If commentators bore us rigid with the remark: “Never rule out the Germans ...” it is because they are usually right. And so with 15, then 10, then five, then two minutes to go to the final whistle on Sunday night, the popular refrain was heard once more as Motty sounded the now obligatory warnings.

But this time, however, there was something different. Motty didn’t sound entirely convincing. Is it me, or was he ever-so-quietly giggling?

Because the Germans, bless their highlights, puffed chests and Audi endorsements, could be ruled out, and ruled out for one simple, unavoidable reason: they looked totally, utterly clueless. Even star player Michael Ballack, their captain, couldn’t hit a barn door with a bratwurst.

Germany looked so bad that they looked like ... like us.

Yes, the German football team is so painfully average you could put them in shirts with three lions and no one would know the difference.

What’s more, England has actually managed to outmanoeuvre its fiercest footballing foe with a masterstroke of tactical planning. This is how it worked: our boys knew they were so bad they didn’t even try to qualify for Euro 2008 and subsequently spent the summer recuperating – or in the case of Wayne Rooney, getting “caked” on his stag do – in readiness for the serious business of the 2010 World Cup, which, as anybody knows, is the tournament that really matters.

Germany’s hapless ball-chasers, by comparison, will start their World Cup qualifying campaign in late summer/autumn being both demoralised and fully aware of the fact that they are as ineffective as the Tommies.

The fact that I picked Fernando Torres to score the first goal in the house sweepstake – and am subsequently 80p better off – has absolutely no bearing on my views about the triumph of the Spanish team. Long may they reign.