Congrats to Spain

So after 3+ weeks of international football, televised once or twice a day, we have reached the end of the UEFA European Championships.  Last night.....  

hold on, I have to share this....

I am lying in bed (as is my habit recently) at exactly 9:11am.  Sarah just walked by with Campbell in tow to get some berries for some of the kids (counselors children).  Here's how the conversation went down.

Cam: GO, GO, GO, GO

Sarry:  Cam, you don't tell your friends to go away...you can say it to dogs but not your friends.

(Cam runs from his place at the door to the kitchen)

Sarry:  Let's go bring these berries to your friends.

Cam: (Running back toward the front door) Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.

I have no idea what that was about, but I hope you can picture him doing it cause it's really funny.  OK, the Euros....

Last night was the final between Germany and Spain.  It was essentially a home game for the Germans since the game was played in Vienna, and as Kenny from WSD notes, Austrians are just Germans in tuxedos.  Paul Mirengoff at Powerline styled it as Silk vs Steel as the fleet and fluid Latins pitted themselves against the Teutonic wall of burly Germans.  This is an overly-simplistic and fairly out-dated view of European football, but it wasn't entirely disproven last night.  The Germans do have the largest back line in Europe and the Spaniards were electric in their passing and movement.  It was, however, the size and power of LFC star striker Fernando Torres that proved the difference in the 1-0 Spanish victory.

Earlier in the match, Torres powered through and rose above his marker, only to hit the post on a fantastic header from a Sergio Ramos cross.  He then scored the matches only goal by shouldering past notoriously slight German defender Philipp Lahm to chip the keeper.  In reality it proved to be the combination of efficient, accurate passing (a traditional German strength) and slick and stylish attacking (a Spanish forte) that gave Spain it's first tournament victory in almost half a century.

In a post from last week Slick indicated that this year's Euros were a disappointment.  Since his blog doesn't have comment capabilities anymore (a decision which he explained to me and I completely understand), I thought I might rebut his assertion here.  I watched a lot of the this tourney.  Of the televised games I saw most of all but 2 games and every minute of at least 75% of them; I was captivated.  Here are some of my highlights:

1. Holland's group stage performance:  The Dutch outscored their opponents from the "group of death" 9-1, including a 2-0 beating of Romania with only 2 regular starters.  They were fantastic to watch and their transition from defense to attack was a thing of beauty.

2.  Turkey - the Turks were not given much of a chance and it seemed that despite the victories, they became more and more of an underdog as they progressed.  They shocked the Czechs to advance from their group by scoring 3 goals in the final 12 minutes despite having their keeper ejected in the final minutes.  That was followed by an amazing shoot-out victory over Croatia which saw the Croats take the lead in the final minute of extra time only to concede the equalizer in stoppage time.  The Turks 36 year-old back-up keeper held firm to give them a birth to the semis.  The loss to Germany in that game in no way takes away from their amazing performance.

3.  Andrey Arshavin - The fiery Russian missed the first 2 games of the group stage due to a fight in the last minutes against Andorra in qualifying.  He returned with a vengeance to put in 2 of the most dominating performances in recent memory (and that is the assessment of people who have far more credibility than me).  He literally ran all over the Swedes and the aforementioned Dutch before being brought back to earth by the eventual champions.

4.  Italy and France - RUBBISH.  Nothing else need be said.

It was a great competition and I am excited to see what the transfer fall-out will be in the next 3-4 weeks.