Sometimes, though not as often as it should, shit just works itself out. Spain played better than every other team in the tournament, scored more goals and conceded fewer - not a sausage since the knockout stages began - flipping the bird at the pragmatic styles that won the last World Cup for Italy, and instead playing fluent, attacking football from game one to the final minute of their final game, appropriately enough commonly known as the 'Final'. They'd waited longer to win than anyone bar the ex-Soviets, they were the best team in the tournament and they played the most attractive football; the only thing which was pragmatic about the result was the one-nil scoreline, which belied the 12-3 shots on goal stat. Spain deserved their win, took it classily, celebrated it respectfully (big ups to Sergio Ramos for busting out the Antonio Puerta memorial shirt on the victory dias), and only a miserable, bitter, delusional fool would say otherwise.
Cue German goalie Mad Jens Lehmann then, who's declared that the ref was biased for ignoring the blatant headbutt between Podolski and Silva (that'd be the one where Podolski headbutted Silva, yeah?), various penalties that should have been, free kicks that shouldn't, and other crimes against humanity that it's fair to say exist solely inside Jens' tortured head. Jens is leaving his job at Arsenal through choice, he says, and it has nothing to do with him not being able to get his first-team place back off former reserve 'keeper Manuel Almunia - who is not only Spanish, but apparently isn't even one of the top three goalkeepers in possession of a Spanish passport. Not in any way miserable, bitter or delusional then.
Speaking of liabilities, the captain of Germany Michael Ballack has long been unfairly associated with failure in big finals, largely because of unfortunate coincidence and statistical correlation between his teams making big finals and his teams losing big finals, right back from the Champions League final of 2002 between his Bayer Leverkusen and Zidane's Real Madrid, which he lost. Or the Champions League final just gone between his Chelsea (OK, Abramovich's Chelsea) and Ronaldo's Man U, which he lost. Or the World Cup Final of 2002 between his Germany and Brazil's Brazil, which he didn't even make it to having gotten himself suspended in the semi-final. However, this is obviously just a statistical aberration. The fact he's bottled it in every big Champions League game he's played is less grounded in statistics and more grounded in the fact he's fucking soft. And in the final: less driving-the-German-midfield, more running around bleeding from the temple screaming at linesman regarding imaginary headbutts. (The one which opened his head up wasn't imaginary, but equally it wasn't illegal. Yet another match-defining act from Marcos Senna that one.)
So, EURO 2008: fun, educational, over. Others have summated the tournament better than I can, or better than I can be arsed trying to do - it's 36 hours after the final whistle and smack-bang on schedule, on the usual post-major-tournament letdown, hanging out for the next big event (Tour de France in a couple of days...) Then again sleeping in past 6.30am on freezing mornings might not be a bad thing. And only 690-odd sleeps until the World Cup. Wherever it ends up being played.
The Doctor is OUT.
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