Tommy Martin: The Euros’ sleek perfection is gone, replaced by something a little quirkier
Head coach of Turkey Senol Gunes leads training session of his team ahead of EURO 2020. Picture: Cuneyt Karadag/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Time, at last, for the tournament that insists on calling itself Euro 2020. Big, badly-assembled and a bit weird-looking, like a flat pack wardrobe designed by Salvador Dali. The bloated folly of a generation of blazered schemers. The right tournament at the wrong time in mostly the wrong places.
Let the games begin!
“I would not do it again,” Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin told the New York Times recently, not exactly sounding like American showman, politician, and businessman, P T Barnum, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes. Ceferin was talking about the wreckage he was left with when Michel Platini’s transcontinental fun bus ran into an inconvenient global pandemic. A bit like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, he has mopped up his predecessor’s mess as best he can, scrubbing the stains left by discarded host cities.
Platini, the disgraced former Uefa president, said his original idea to stage the tournament in 13 nations across the continent was, a “romantic” one. If currying political favour be the food of love, then play on.
At the time, concerns about the carbon footprint of this thing were pooh-poohed as prospective hosts fought for a piece of the action, scrambling for the sweeties from Uncle Michel’s pocket. Back then, we still thought we could have anything we wanted. In modern life, anyone could be famous; now, anyone could host the Euros.
The sense of grasping acquisitiveness seems discordant now, in the time of sustainability and pandemic restrictions. But if there’s anything that is run by the laws of supply and demand, it’s major football tournaments. People like them. People like hosting them. They especially like being in them. Let’s give them what they want.
More. Bigger. Better? Depends.
The expansion of the Euros from 16 to 24 teams in 2016 fundamentally changed the character of the tournament. In distant, eight-team days it was ridiculously exclusive, a roped-off Davos for the super elite, barring the odd Jack Charlton-led intrusion.
Thanks to the break-up of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, this vibe didn’t change much with the move to 16 teams from 1996. Look through those tournaments and there was room for maybe one breakthrough qualifier, like Croatia in 1996, Slovenia in 2000 or Latvia in 2004. As for romance, Greece in 2004 is all she wrote.
Otherwise, the Euros exuded seriousness, quality, luxury brand sheen. If the World Cup was a global party, the 16-team European Championships were about precision engineering. Matthias Sammer’s archetypal Germany in 1996, Zidane’s France four years later, the Spain of Xavi and Iniesta.
Amid the excellence, makeweights like the Republic of Ireland in 2012 felt like they were letting the side down. Even the format was elegant, 16 teams folding into eight, and so on.
Then came the move to 24, and suddenly the Euros decided to let it all hang out, like a City banker jacking it in, buying a campervan and growing dreadlocks. Things got messy. Third place in the group got you through. Well, sometimes. And who invited all these guys? Iceland! Wales! Northern Ireland! Albania!
But what do you remember about Euro 2016? Portugal methodically grinding their way to a major title? Or the Icelandic thunderclap, Welch journeyman, Hal Robson-Kanu, Cruyff-turning the entire Belgian nation, Will Grigg being on fire and Robbie Brady and that night in Lille?
So the sleek perfection is gone, replaced by something quirkier, more democratic. For some, the desire to leverage the tournament for political and financial gain spoiled it. Viewed another way, it has made it more egalitarian. Iceland divvied up much of their Euro 2016 spoils among their domestic clubs. Blazered schemers are not all bad.
Like four years ago, the stories of Euro 2020(ish) may belong to those who will bring colour and novelty: North Macedonia, Finland or Scotland, those once-reliable providers of major tournament light relief.
On the other hand, the elite end looks pretty well-poised too.
The hot-housing of talent in the modern academy system means major European nations are stocked like never before. At a stretch, you can make a case for eight possible winners without even scouring the paddock for dark horses.
Yet question marks hang over them all. France seem worthy favourites — proven winners and unrivalled in depth. Still, Didier Deschamps felt insecure enough about their cutting edge to call on Karim Benzema after five years in exile.
Germany have a lame duck coach and are hoping the recall of Mats Hummels and Thomas Mueller can school their tottering young colts in Teutonic tournament ways.
Portugal have more talent than in 2016 but that poses its own problems for a team built to supply Cristiano Ronaldo. Spain looked solid and crafty but are now Covid stricken. Injuries and the defection of Ronald Koeman have destabilised the Dutch. Some feel Belgium’s moment has passed.
And then there’s England.
Almost a home tournament, a generation of exciting young talent and the experience of 2018 in the bank. This should be their time. But one constant down all the years is that tournaments are won at the back. If Harry Maguire does not return to full fitness, it’s hard to see John Stones, Tyrone Mings and the skittish Jordan Pickford shutting out Europe’s finest attacks.
Also, this is a fractured, dislocated tournament for a fractured, dislocated time, and no nation encapsulates that more than the one that will host the semi-finals and final. The deep divisions in English society that have led to the booing of players taking a knee in protest against racism do not feel so much as an intrusion of politics into sport, as yet another reminder of how they are so entwined.
England’s fortunes seem doomed to be dipped in toxic backwash. Will success be seized on as a moment of Brexiteer exceptionalism? Failure evidence of the left’s quisling weakness? Gareth Southgate’s plea for unity and support this week was touching, but left the overriding feeling that he is too good for them.
So this is not, as the blazers like to proclaim, a continent coming together as one. How could it be when one of the venues, Baku, is blatantly in another continent entirely? Nor when liberal EU bastions like Amsterdam and Rome share hosting duties with Brexit Britain, Viktor Orban’s far-right Budapest and St Petersburg, the cradle of Putinism.
It is not a coming-out party after Covid either, more of an awkward, socially-distanced reunion behind masks. The organisers and participants must muddle through the travel restrictions and quarantine requirements, cursing as they go the names of the wheeler-dealers who came up with the whole idea a distant decade ago.
But it is a tournament. There will be football every day for the next few weeks. Some of it will be thrilling. Some of it will be heart-breaking. Some of it will be rubbish.
Best of all, there will be crowds, maybe even big ones by the end. There might, Michel, even be a bit of romance too. Hopefully, it will turn out to be the right tournament at the right time after all.
