From the moment Poland’s Robert Lewandowski scored the opening goal of the tournament with a brilliant header against Greece, Euro 2012 has served up one great moment after another during a thrilling group stage.
Superb goals have followed, including Mario Balotelli’s volley against Ireland, German Mario Gomez’s first strike against the Netherlands and Jakub Blaszczykowski’s equalizer for Poland against Russia. The quality remained till the end, with Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s exquisitely executed volley for Sweden against France—the pick of the bunch.
In keeping with the exciting and unpredictable thrills of the first phase, Russia made a dramatic impact with a blistering 4-1 win over the Czech Republic but failed to advance after drawing with Poland and losing to Greece.
The Greeks, shock Euro 2004 winners, caused another surprise, recovering from a draw with the Poles and defeat by the Czechs to beat Russia for their first win since the 2004 final, to take an unexpected place in the quarter-finals and ease the Eurozone gloom back home. Neither co-hosts Poland nor Ukraine survived the group stage, but they still produced memorable moments.
Unlike the World Cup in South Africa two years ago which produced plenty of drab, uninspiring games, Euro 2012, the last to involve 16 teams before the tournament is expanded to an unwieldy 24 finalists in 2016, has been a fans’ delight. There was not a single 0-0 draw in the group stage.
Doubts about the co-hosts’ ability to stage the tournament surfaced almost from the day Uefa awarded it to them in 2007, but whatever problems there may have been leading up to kick-off, most of those fears have not materialized.
While there have been isolated outbreaks of mainly politically inspired violence and some racism issues—the major worry for the authorities beforehand—Europe’s top players have ensured they have been the ones making the headlines.
Cristiano Ronaldo, after a slow start, produced the individual performance of the group phase with two goals—he could have had five—when Portugal beat the Netherlands 2-1 on Sunday.
Ukraine’s Andriy Shevchenko was virtually anointed a national saint for his double against Sweden in their opening 2-1 comeback win in front of a frenzied Kiev crowd.
Croatia’s Mario Mandzukic, a prolific scorer for his German club VfL Wolfsburg, announced himself to a wider audience with three goals before Croatia’s unlucky elimination from a group including Italy and world champions Spain.
But proving that footballers can also be at once brilliant and barmy, Nicklas Bendtner scored twice for Denmark in a 3-2 defeat by Portugal, then got a €100,000 (Rs 70.8 lakh) fine and a one-match ban for revealing the name of a bookmaker on his underpants.
Plenty of other players have done their careers a world of good at the tournament. There have been notable performances from Russian playmaker Alan Dzagoyev, who scored three goals, French fullback Mathieu Debuchy and Dutch defender Jetro Willems who, aged 18 and 71 days, became the youngest player to appear in the finals.
While the Netherlands, beaten World Cup finalists two years ago, will want to forget this tournament as soon as possible after losing all three matches, the eight teams still involved have the quality to make the knockout stage memorable.
Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com
