It ended with the European Champions playing seven, winning one, drawing six in regulation time. If that doesn’t sum up a tournament that struggled to set the pulses racing at any point, I don’t know what does. In the end, Portugal prevailed, and this after Cristiano Ronaldo limped off midway through the first half of the final.
By Dave Bowler
In doing so, the irony is that the man who would be the star did his country two great services. First, it took five minutes, an aborted comeback, and a demand for a stretcher to finally get him off the field. So the strong start to the game by the French was disrupted. From there, they struggled to recapture the same rhythm or intensity.
Second, and as we have long had cause to suspect, while Ronaldo might be a magician, Portugal are actually a more cohesive team without him demanding and dictating on the pitch. With each player given greater responsibility in his absence, they grew into their jobs. they gave a composed, organised and generally more rounded display. They relied on themselves to win the game rather than waiting for Cristiano to do it for them. Recovering from a very nervy start, they gradually turned the tables on thehome side. France started to find the occasion increasingly imposing as the minutes ticked by.
The men who got France to the final, Pogba and Griezmann, couldn’t quite find the same spark. Pogba played too deep to have a real impact on the game. Griezmann didn’t get the chance to run into space he’d had in previous games. He was a victim of his own success. Yet he still missed the chance of the game when he put a header over the bar.
France did have two other great chances in the second half of normal time. Giroud had an effort well saved. Then the hapless Gignac scuffed a shot against the post in the last minute. At that point, you started to wonder if it might be Portugal’s night.
Extra Time
Heading into extra-time, Ronaldo came to the touchline from the dressing room. It was as if they’d just rolled away the stone and he was risen once more. In truth, he played the team man role to the full, urging and cajoling his colleagues to give it one last go. He almost took over from his manager. And in the end, it worked. In the second period of extra-time, Eder clubbed a 20-yard effort just inside the post. From there, Portugal, the most defensively minded team in the latter stages of the competition, were always going to collect their clean sheet and the silver trophy.
Overall, you couldn’t pretend that this had been a vintage tournament. Widening the competition to 24 teams ended up being something and nothing of an idea. We spent a whole fortnight whittling it down to 16. Conceptually, 24 makes little or no sense, and it certainly didn’t lift the quality. The idea of four best third-placed sides – including Portugal – going through was nonsense. Far better to either return to the previous format of 16 or go the whole hog and replicate the World Cup with 32 teams, eight groups of four.
As it was, we had a tournament that spent far too long in neutral, going nowhere. It wasn’t helped by the misfortune that saw the knockout draw become hopelessly lopsided. The top half carried barely any threat while the bottom half was groaning with the continent’s heavyweights.
Tournament of Underdogs
In no small part, it was the tournament of the underdogs. That can be pleasing for a one-off, but generally means drab games when it repeats and repeats. It would be churlish to dismiss the feats of Northern Ireland, the Republic, and especially Iceland. But in terms of moments that will stick in the memory banks beyond their boundaries, it boils down to a song about Will Grigg, who didn’t even get a game. There was the strange sight of Roy Keane going all metrosexual, hugging Martin O’Neill. Oh, and there was some synchronised clapping. It wasn’t exactly Mexico 1970, was it?
Wales were underdogs of sorts, although it’s hard to dismiss them as that when they have one of the three or four best players in the world in their team. They overachieved perhaps by beating Belgium – the tournament’s biggest let down – in comprehensive fashion. Sadly, they couldn’t defeat serial bores Portugal in the semi-final.
Euro 2016 also saw the end of the reign of Spain. Tiki-taka was finally laid to rest at the feet of an ageing team who no longer had the sparkle to turn possession into anything other than pretty patterns. The Italians brilliantly disguised their own shortcomings to produce some of the competition’s most enduring moments. That was before they blew it with the signature image, Zaza’s “My Little Pony” run-up and penalty miss against the Germans.
Honorable mention for Germany
Germany looked ominously good throughout the competition. They always did enough to come through every test without ever raising a sweat. Italy pushed them the closest as the challenge got greater. In the end, they encountered a host nation that had grown in belief and stature with each game.
All told, Euro 2016 was an event that has rarely climbed above the adequate, right down to the end. The truth quite simply is that all too often, magic, thrills, excitement, the stuff we pay our money to see, had been stifled by admirable, but ultimately suffocating, organisation. As players get quicker, stronger, faster, that pitch looks smaller and smaller.
Finding space to do anything in is going to be the biggest challenge in the next phase of football’s development.