Unpredictability serves up a Euros to remember
It’s the first 16-team European Championships in which every single match in the last round of group games has had something on the line.
Yes, two teams were eliminated early but, otherwise, there have been no dead rubbers; only hugely lively drama.
It all feeds into the general feeling of excitement and unpredictability. To a certain extent, chaos has reigned — as best illustrated by Group A, Greece’s remarkable qualification and Russia’s elimination.
Even on Sunday, we had Germany surprisingly on the edge until they got the winner against Denmark and Portugal coming from behind to beat and knock out the Dutch. Before last night’s matches, that Portuguese game was the fourth of 20 to feature either a two-goal comeback or a complete turnaround. That is actually a remarkably high ratio.
And it also raises a genuine question as to whether this is already one of the most attention-grabbing tournaments ever. Certainly, you can’t really allow yourself to look away.
That itself, however, leads into a larger issue. What actually makes a ‘great’ tournament? Beyond more esoteric and personal issues like nostalgia and the point people were at in their lives, what ensures a specific competition’s legacy lasts in the manner of Mexico 1970?
Unpredictability and excitement certainly are hugely important. For one thing, they automatically mean a tournament isn’t dull.
That is not how you could really describe recent World Cups – most notably 1990 and 2010. Of course, the global tournament is at something of a disadvantage here. In order to be truly representative of, well, the world, it really must be as big as 32 teams with a fair distribution around the confederations.
There are a few inherent and unavoidable problems with this, though, that simply must be accepted.
For one, it generally ensures World Cups are a bit too bloated with no real shape or pattern. Two, there’s the fact that, as yet, different parts of the world are inevitably at different stages of development.
As such, in the last three World Cups, we’ve had a 7-0 and an 8-0. This has never happened at the European Championships, where the biggest margin victory has been five goals.
Of course, it’s also here that the current Euros are at a distinct advantage. Allowing 16 teams to compete is a high enough threshold for the majority of the teams to be at a similar level in terms of quality. It’s arguably this that explains the unpredictability of this summer’s tournament and that of 2004.
Consider this: the last World Cup runner-up to actually get past the group stages of the subsequent European Championships was West Germany in 1988. Since then, all of Italy 96, Germany 2004, France 2008 and, now, Netherlands 2012 have been eliminated in the opening round.
But that issue of quality raises another factor. Because you’ve still got to determine the deeper reasons for that unpredictability. The 2002 World Cup, after all, probably produced more upsets than any other tournament in history.
Would you call it a great tournament though? Highly unlikely. The sheer number of shocks left something of a quality vacuum in the latter rounds.
What’s more, the platform for those shocks was created by the all-consuming club game which also left a quality vacuum in international football in general. The expansion of the Champions League ensured that many of the elite players were far too fatigued to play at their full potential.
This further meant that lesser teams could more easily bridge the gap by properly applying a bit of pragmatism — a process which culminated with Greece’s victory in 2004, and one that lasted until Spain’s Barcelona core reset the rules and the parameters.
And that is equally important as regards unpredictability. It is best, of course, if it’s a consequence of most sides trying to force situations with attacking football. But, sometimes, it’s just a result of the tension caused by turgid, unproductive football.
In that, international competitions are inherently hostage to the tactical trends of the day. But ultimately, there is no real accounting for excellence. Sometimes, tournaments are just fortunate that a number of teams are at particular high points.
That was certainly the case in 1970and 2000, with a series of elite teams playing to their full potential.
In Spain, Euro 2012 has had that double champion. It’s also had a general pattern of attacking football, with much of its unpredictably excitingly coming from teams actually going for it. But not all of its unpredictability coming from that.
Unlike Mexico 1970 and Euro 2000, it hasn’t quite had so many teams at that extreme level of quality. Much of excitement has come from error as opposed to excellence — with Russia missing so many chances proving the perfect example.
As such, it’s probably not a tournament on the level of those two. But, certainly, it’s hard to think of many that better it.
