All this week, Balls.ie writers have been selecting their favourite European Championships. Last and very much least is Gavin Cooney, who remembers Euro 2008.
That first major tournament is usually the gateway drug. It is a month-long unfurling of the tantalising tapestry of professional football, usually the trigger for kids to grab a football, hit the streets and start practising the moves of the men who beguiled that tournament in the hope that they could one day emulate them. My first tournament was the 2002 World Cup, and I did exactly this. (In a decision that admittedly looks poor in hindsight, that player was El-Hadji Diouf).
By 2008, I had been thoroughly disabused of this notion that I might actually be any good. I had spent the intervening years clumsily staggering around various underage leagues, moving with all the dexterity of an ogre while resembling a distress signal made flesh. (The belated appealing for offside in an underage game which does not use the rule feels like a lament for a lost soul).
So by the time Euro 2008 had swung around, I had accepted my magnificent limitations and instead, when kicking a ball against a wall, decided to be the commentator instead. Having not been bestowed the gifts of coordination, I did at least have the ability to tear words from my throat. (This, I realised was not a unique gift, but it felt like something worth sticking with).
At half-time in Austria's game against Croatia, I took a football for some fresh air. I had marked a spot on the gable wall, and tried hitting it, a display accompanied by commentary. Having had a couple of efforts as Modric and Kranjcar, I showed fine journalistic balance by switching to Austria. The ball skewed off my instep, ending in sibilant calamity: the ball smashed my parents' bedroom window to the sound of 'Pogatetzzzzzssssshit'.
***
If ever a teenager's sporting limits coalesced, it is evident in the smashing of a window to the tune of an average Middlesbrough centre-back. Entirely deterred, I decided that simply watching a football tournament was a much better idea, and this allowed me to find the true beauty of a major tournament: the number of bloody games on terrestrial TV. Very little compares to total immersion in a major tournament, the ability to watch something for five hours a day is one of the great human advancements of the twenty-first century.
I was doing my Junior Cert at the time of Euro 2008, so Ireland had the good decency not to qualify. I remember my unspeakable anger at my parents for being careless enough to send me school at such an age that would ultimately see me miss a portion of a major tournament for exams. Happily, group games began at 5pm, so I was home in time for them all.
England also failed to qualify; a failure condensed in the image of Steve McLaren glumly holding an umbrella amidst a Wembley downpour against Croatia. McLaren's greatest impact on football has been to deny fellow managers the chance to use an umbrella in times of great rain, for fear of the 'Wally With A Brolly' tabloid reprisal.
An umbrella would have been useful in the Group A game between Switzerland and Turkey, played amidst an electrical storm. The rain caused chaos, and a ball getting stuck in a puddle in the Turkish six-yard box, was immortalised with the great line 'a tap-in for Hakan Yakin'. The TV picture was lost regularly, with Billo stressing every couple of minutes in the RTE studio that the storm affected all broadcasters (code for 'don't turn on the BBC').
Turkey were responsible for some of the great moments of the tournament. The final group game with the Czech Republic was set for a penalty shoot-out (in a group game!) before Petr Cech dropped a clanger 15 minutes from time. We were slightly appeased by the sight of Tuncay going in goal for the final few minutes.
Other fragments of memories persist. Romania were one of the most miserable major tournament sides in a proper Group of Death with Holland, Italy and France. Van Basten's team illuminated the group stages in many ways: their kit was beautiful, and they walloped their group opponents on an aggregate of 9-1. They sadly collapsed in extra-time of a quarter-final to Russia, for whom Andrey Arshavin actually tried a leg. Russia themselves were mightily entertaining, and ultimately succumbed twice to Spain in the semi-finals.
Turkey continued to confound. They somehow rescued a quarter-final against Croatia in the embers of extra-time having conceded just moments earlier, only to suffer that fate against Germany in the semi-final:
***
It was the coronation of the Spain, however, that has sealed Euro 2008's legacy in my mind. If Euro 2004 was a carnival ruined by the celebration of the bearded lady; the follow-up competition was given the winners it deserved. This was Spain before they became a matter for philosophical interrogation, winning the tournament before Pep Guardiola took charge of his first game at Barcelona.
Whereas Spain later became a side that would obsessively try to stain glass, the 2008 iteration would be satisfied merely smashing it.
Rather than play with no strikers, they played with two: David Villa was deadly, while Fernando Torres was at the peak of his once-considerable powers, gliding upon the German defence in the final as the man who could traipse through puddles without making a splash, leaving Philip Lahm subject to the predictable headlines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgE9usaiX4A
Before he became Pep's metronome of modern art, Sergi Busquets was nowhere to be seen, Marcos Senna a now-forgotten revelation. This was also a Spain who cast off their lumbering reputation as bottlers: the FourFourTwo preview magazine described them as "potential winners with the self-destruct button at the ready".
***
Euro 2008 also made false the notion of a tournament desperately needing successful hosts: Austria and Switzerland did not make it out of their groups, the first host nations to fail to do so. This happily brought to an end Emanuel Pogatetz' unknown reign of terror.
Sometimes, you're better off just watching.
See Also: Euro '92: The Best European Championships Ever
See Also: Euro '96: When I Learned To Love English Misfortune
See Also: Euro 2004: Shortsleeved 'Keepers And Surf: Watching Euro 2004 Drunk In Lahinch
