Spain wins 1-0
Pre-game prediction: Spain 3 Germany 2
Scorer: Fernando Torres (Spain)
Spain deserved to win the Final and deserved to be the Euro 2008 Champions. It is always good when the best team wins and they were the best team. They had the most depth, played the best football and scored the most goals. Germany just did enough to get to the finals and finally couldn’t squeeze any more out.
Some closing thoughts:
Aragones, you are one lucky dog. It made no sense to pull Cesc and Silva with that much time left and replace them with more defensive players. It absolutely made no sense to pull Torres who was killing the German defense. But, hey, it worked out.
Puyol and Marchena – I owe you an apology. You didn’t concede a goal in knockouts and only gave up two goals all tournament (they didn’t play against Greece). Regardless of what the opposing strikers didn’t do, you got it done.
Cesc, Ramos and Torres – hope you can handle the heat, because you three along with Iniesta, Silva, Villa and maybe Xavi are the core of the World Cup 2010 effort for Spain. Look for someone like Pique to step in at center half. But this is a young, young team and look to be there for many years.
Player of the game – Fernando Torres. He was unplayable and only Aragones could solve the problem for the Germans.
Player of the tournament for Spain – Marcos Senna. The rock that kept it together. No bad games or major mistakes.
Player of the tournament period – Andrei Arshavin. Yes, he had a bad one against Spain and only played three games, but he is the one everyone is talking about. Close seconds are Zhirkov, Senna and Casillas. Top sub is Semih Senturk.
All Star Team of the tournament:
Goalkeeper: Iker Casillas (sorry Buffon, but he played two more games and gave up only two goals – and he did save two penalties to your one save during the shootout)
Defenders: Yuri Zhirkov, Carles Puyol, Christian Panucci, Sergio Ramos
Midfield: Andrei Arshavin, Marcos Senna, Cesc Fabregas, Bastian Schweinsteiger
Strikers: Fernando Torres, David Villa
Subs: Gianluigi Buffon, Razhvan Rat, Luka Modric, Wesley Sneijder, Lukas Podolski, Semih Senturk
Coach: Guus Hiddink
On to the club season. Here is the next discussion – Ronaldo, you would be a fool to go to Real Madrid right now…
1 Comment
July 4, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I really enjoyed Euro 2008. Thought it was a very entertaining few weeks of football. Certainly an improvement on Euro 2004 – and the best thing about it all is that the best team one. Spain played some sublime football and I was pleased to see them win it.