"I've explained this several times. The shaking was part of the game. The telling was not."

Euro 2008 Recap: I'm ranking teams (I know: shocker) from worst performance to best performance, paying particular attention to expectations going in. For instance, it's perfectly acceptable for Croatia to advance through pool play and then lose in the quarters (though not in the manner they did--more on that in a bit); not so for, say, Italy.

Also, as you (being so freaking observant...I really must commend you on this) will no doubt note, this has been posted prior to the final being played. Two reasons: (1) I'm away in Muskoka until Tuesday (though I plan to be in a booth, dutifully overpaying for a pie at Boston Pizza on Sunday afternoon for the final), and (2) in terms of meeting/exceeding/falling short of projections, this tournament--regardless of how Sunday shakes down--is more or less over.

Now, since:

(a) I was an indifferent soccer player the one year I played (no joke: in 1985);
(b) As recently as the lead up to the '98 World Cup, I didn't understand how offsides worked (I thought it was like hockey); and
(c) despite countless hours spent playing Champ Manager '07, I'm still occasionally flummoxed by soccer formations (do you start from your own goalie and work outwards, or is it the opposite?)

please don't expect any trenchant observations about coaching gaffes and/or serious strategic questioning. (Shuk, help me out! You're a soccer writer, for Christ's sake!) This is about as superficial as it gets. That said, let's begin:

17. England: OK, sorry. Cheap shot.

16. France: Next to my pick #1, this was the easiest slot to fill in. To be sure, this has a bit to do with me picking them 7th in my Euro pool and them just not performing. And, yeah, as a fan of Les Bleus, you could make all sorts of valid (or semi-valid) arguments--they had to play Romania without an Henry (hurt), they caught the Dutch when they were white hot and more or less unstoppable, they were the victims of a too-harsh red card early against Italy--but all of that dances around the central issue that the French were listless from start to finish. Emblematic: trailing the Dutch by two early in the second half, Henry took a cross and, rather delightfully, tapped it in. Literally, one minute later, as the berets ("God, do I hate the beret")and baguettes of the French fans still hung in the air, Holland scored, putting the game out of reach. Done and done. So, to summarize: France's gut-check rally lasted all of 70 seconds.

15. Greece: yes, but if you average their last two Euro Cups, it looks as though they won it 0.5 times this year.

14. Italy: a little low? Perhaps. But we should never underestimate the incredibly high expectations of Italians, who have finished in the top three in 3 of the last 5 World Cups (their record over that same stretch in Euro Cups is considerably worse, but that's really neither here nor there). Seriously, my heart breaks for you, Italy, what with you never being ranked lower than 16th in the world in my lifetime (it was, like, a major story here when we cracked the Top 100 in the FIFA rankings) and your four World Cup titles. (Fun fact: did you realize that Canada is now ranked 60th in the world? Not bad, eh? What's that? Italy's #3? Oh. Well then.)

13. Portugal: started strong (beating Turkey 2-0 and the Czech Republic 3-1), but faded late (getting worked over in a meaningless game with Switzerland and then basically not showing up for the first 45 minutes in a decidedly meaningful elimination game against Germany). Nor does this clip engender much goodwill:



(now I know that he actually eventually gets stepped on, but look at him writhe around before that. Lame.)

I'm also bumping Portugal down a spot because Jon's wife Alex, who is Portuguese, claimed--completely seriously in my view--that Germany cheated against Portugal, life imitating art (see Victory), if you will. Not cool, Alex. Not cool. (Also: John Huston directed Victory? WTF? I did not know that.)

(Also, how stupid does this sound? From imdb.com:

The original draft of the script was a serious drama, based on the true story of a group of allied POWs challenged to a football match by the Germans. The deal was that if the Germans won the match, the POWs would be set free in Switzerland. However if the POWs won, they would be shot. The POWs decided to go for 'victory', won the match and were consequently executed.

This makes the actual version seem like cinema verite in comparison...and I will remind you that the actual movie features Stallone as a world class goalie, so...yeah).

Dammit...one more bit of Victory trivia (in my defense, when else will I ever have the chance to reference it? Exactly.):

Reportedly, Sylvester Stallone insisted that his character score the game-winning goal in the film, as he felt he was the biggest star in the film. The non-American crew was finally able to convince him of the absurdity of the goalkeeper scoring the winning goal, and the penalty shot was specifically written to placate his ego.

12. Austria: put it this way, when you've lost to the Faroe-fucking-Islands in something other than a "who has the most kings?" competition in the last twenty years, lost to Spain and Isreal by a combined 14-0 in the last ten, and when your country circulates a petition asking that the team remove itself from competition (even though you're a co-host and are obligated to play in said tournament), you've already done a pretty good job of managing expectations. Something truly horrific--like a player shitting his pants on the field or someone getting an own goal hat trick--would have to happen for Austria (ranked 90-somethingth in the world going in here and, the consensus seems to be, wouldn't have even sniffed at a spot were it not for the automatic spaces granted to the hosts) to fare worse than the pundits predicted. A point against a similarly overmatched Polish squad (thus avoiding the indignity of being totally shut out--I'm looking at you, Greece!)? Well done, lads. Well done.

11. Czech Republic: now that's a bad beat.

10. Switzerland: poised as a sleeper, the Swiss only seemed to reach their potential against Portugal (and, even there, it needs to be mentioned that the game was meaningless for Portugal, so perhaps reading too much into it is inadvisable). I feel stupid because, instead of picking Turkey (who went 15th in our pool), I chose the Swiss with my 14th pick. Rats. Still, that's not as dumb as Misha picking Austria tenth (kindly see above), ahead of Croatia, Sweden, and Russia.

9. Croatia: Now, there are a few things to keep in mind about the Turkey game: I think the Croatians should have been granted the substitution that they were so clearly frantically trying to make; apparently the two minutes after you score a goal are the soccer equivalent of the break back in tennis; and adding extra extra time to extra time strikes me as not unlike taxing a mandatory 15% gratuity, or attempting to throw a service charge on corkage, which ALREADY COSTS $10 A BOTTLE, DAMMIT--sorry, I think I blacked out there for a second. All of that said: you cannot lose that game. You just can't. And, while I think everyone expected them to lose in a shootout, I'm guessing no one expected them to lose that spectacularly (going 1 for 4, including missing the net entirely twice--something I've never seen before).

8. Netherlands: trying to think of a non-soccer equivalent of what the Dutch did this year. First, they dominate group play like Chappelle-as-Kobe (9 goals), then come out and shit the bed against an inferior Russian squad in the elimination round. Now, let's not go crazy and pretend this is on par with the Patriots coming into the Super Bowl 18-0 and bricking it against the Giants. It's not. But I do think this falls somewhere between the '07 Mavericks getting unceremoniously bumped by the eighth-seeded Warriors in the first round and the 116-win '01 Mariners flaming out in the ALCS springs to mind. In all three cases (and, while this may seem harsh, whatever the Dutch's soccer legacy is, winning it all really isn't part of it), you didn't really expect the favorite to win the whole thing, but you were still kinda shocked when they lost.

On the plus side, their coach [note: who stepped down after they were knocked out]--former AFC Ajax and AC Milan superstar Marco van Basten--would undoubtedly prevail in Euro coaches Royal Rumble (though the Croatian coach looks like an eye-gouger, and should be watched cautiously at all times in such a scenario.

T7. Poland and Sweden: Neither of these teams were pegged to advance, but if any one of them had gone on, it wouldn't have been totally shocking. And, since I have nothing else to add, it's list time:

Top Five Uniforms (sorry, had to be done):
5. Spain's Golds (busted out for their semi-final beatdown of Russia)

4. France's Blues
3. Holland's Orange (always and forever a classic)
2. Spain's Reds
1. Portugal's Whites: beautiful.

Worst:
1. Turkey's White and Turqoise alternate kits (worn against Switzerland): The hell? Turqoise? It's not even on your flag! (I know, I know, there's no orange on the dutch flag, either--but at least orange is Holland's national color). I swear, the only thing I can come up with is that there's a Turk-Turq connection, which means it's a pun...which is....even worse.

Here seems like as good a place as any to ask: why doesn't Germany bust out black uniforms with the classic red and yellow stripes on the shoulder (a la the Icelandic villains in Mighty Ducks 2?). Those? Would be intimidating as hell. Moving on...

Top Five Games:
5. Spain-Italy, quarter-final.
4. Germany-Portugal, quarter-final.
3. Russia-Netherlands, quarter-final.
2. Czech Republic-Turkey, pool play.
1. Germany-Turkey, semi-final.

5. Romania: because, I'm sorry, who cares, really? Mired in the group of death, they were fingered as the whipping boys, likely to emerge without a single point. Well they got that single point, thank you very much! Bring on the ticker tape parade in Bucharest (or, in any event, whatever people in Romania do to celebrate. If my Onion Atlas is any indication, this may well involve huddling for warmth.)

4. Russia: this is awfully confusing, because I've watched them play four times now, and I swear they're no good. Against Spain, they looked downright terrible, though with Andrei Arshavin in the lineup (as he was from their third game onward), they're a different team. Their presence in the semis did lead to this exchange between myself and my grandfather, who is Ukrainian, and holds a well-documented (and entirely justified, frankly) grudge against the former Soviet Union:

[five minutes of absolute silence, then]

Me [as we're watching extra time between Spain and Italy]: soooo.....do you care who wins the tournament?
Grandpa: Not really. [Long pause] As long as it's not Russia.

3. Germany: gah...clearly trying their absolute hardest to be the only Euro team in history to win the tournament without playing a single decent game. True, they were lights out for that first half against Portugal, but they got sloppier as the game progressed. I'm a bit torn here, since Germany is about as close to a rooting interest as I have in this year's tournament (damn you, Ireland, I could've busted out any number of great T-shirts had you qualified--I'm wearing my Trinity College tee right now as a form of protest, though against what I can't be certain), yet I would have been fine with Turkey winning.

By the way, here are some snippets from the highly entertaining live commentary from ESPNsoccernet:

93': Ballack gives away a needless free-kick about 30 yards out, bang in the middle. Can Turkey pull off another amazing leveller?
94': Tumer Metin, who had sneaked on for Colin Kazim Richards, has blown his big moment by blazing his free kick over the bar. It HAD to be on target, seeing as how crap [German keeper Jens] Lehmann has been.
95': It's over! Germany are in the Euro 2008 final, with possibly one of the worst performances in the competitions history! Turkey have been robbed!

96': Well, what an unbelievably dramatic night that was! No-one had expected a five goal end-to-end thriller, or if they did they'd long been carted off to the nuthouse. The Turkish players are crushed, and they've every right to be. They've outplayed Germany, taken the game to them, and somehow, somehow, they're out. Astonishing.
97': I suppose the only consolation is that if Germany don't transform in the next few days, they'll get hammered by whoever wins tomorrow's semi-final between Russia and Spain. Join us for that. Until then...

So, yeah, it's a little tough to put them higher than #3. And yet they're 90 minutes away from their fourth Euro title, so it's hardly been a disappointing tournament...

2. Spain: pumping my fist, since the fact that they made the final guarantees me no worse than a tie in our Euro pool. Good times! Abject selfishness aside, I'm happy for the Spanish squad since, even if they don't win on Sunday (though, somewhat foolishly, I believe they will), I think they've gone a long way to ditch their reputations as underachievers. (And those uniforms! Oh, my!)

1. Turkey: and, really, it's not all that close.

Here's what I wrote just prior to kickoff in the Turkey-Germany game: "given that they've their Euro record prior to '08 consists of 10 "did not qualifies," 1 "failed to advance beyond pool play," and 1 QF appearance (in 2000); that they've led for all of nine minutes (out of 390 played--remarkable that) thus far in the tournament, and are responsible for two of the most exciting finishes in Euro history (Czech Republic, Croatia), I think it's safe to say that they've more than met expectations. Agreed? I'm guessing my buddy Caglar, who lives in Ankara, hasn't slept in over a week." (btw, does anyone remember Turkey finishing third--!--in the 2002 World Cup? No, me neither.)

After the game: Huh.

Ah.

Well...

...that's a tough loss to stomach, no doubt. One can't help but wonder how Turkey would've fared had they had a goalie who wasn't actively throwing games. Seriously, that guy fucking murdered them (see: Croatia's goal...where he's wildly out of position and then leisurely strolls to get back into place as the ball flies by him and his mistimed pursuit of a cross versus Germany).