Less is more after marathon season

An arduous club season, no matter how successful, might not be the platform on which the national side can thrive

On Saturday night, Mario Gomez provided something of an anomaly.

And not, despite the derision he received after the Champions League final, that he scored in. Quite the opposite.

Because, to be fair to the forward, he hit 26 league goals last season. In terms of European players, that was only bested by Klaas-Jan Huntelaar with 29, Robin van Persie with 30 and, of course, Cristiano Ronaldo with 46. All of them are in Group B with him.

None of the latter three, however, scored. In fact, in the cases of Van Persie and Ronaldo, both missed gilt-edged chances.

Just before the end of the first half in the Netherlands-Denmark game, Van Persie forced a save from Stephan Andersen when he should have finished. Just before the end of the Germany-Portugal game, then, Ronaldo found himself blocked by Jerome Boateng when, in such situations, he usually races through to power home.

By contrast, Gomez took his goal admirably, beautifully guiding his header into the far corner.

It was a curious contrast. And it also raises a bigger issue about the biggest players in European Championships.

Because, when you look through the history of the 16-team tournament, the stars and top scorers have not always enjoyed the most stellar careers.

In 1996, for example, Karel Poborsky immediately commanded the attention of some of Europe’s biggest clubs and an eventual move to Manchester United. He never recreated the superb level of that summer.

Four years later, Nuno Gomes finally gave Portugal the front man they had been missing and had as much influence on the tournament as Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane. He, also, never reached that rare level again.

Of course, the most famous examples came in Euro 2004. And not just from Greece. Milan Baros finished as top scorer on five goals but his career, naturally, wasn’t exactly magnificent.

For five games in that summer, he was a joy to watch. A peak, in particular, came in the quarter-final against Denmark, especially when he gloriously chipped Thomas Sorenson. That contributed to his total of five goals.

And that was only four less than he scored in the entirety of the next league season for Liverpool, when he managed a very, very middling nine in 26 games.

Much of this probably comes back to an argument that’s been made on these pages for: that the elite club game is now so all-consuming that, very often, it allows lesser, fresher players to make greater strides in the following summers.

And, when you look at the end of Van Persie’s season, he certainly seemed to suffer from some kind of drop that perhaps made his miss against Denmark a little less surprising. In the first 28 games of the league campaign for Arsenal, he scored 26 goals. In the last 10, he only managed three. A significant reduction.

Of course, there are other issues here like the different rhythms and styles of national teams. But, on the whole, it illustrates that club form is often a poor guide to international tournaments.

Indeed, Group B — which could well be settled tonight — essentially distills this.

In the build-up to the tournament, it was impossible not to be blinded by the sheer glitz of the pool. It had the two top European scorers of the last term, all of the preening personality that goes with Ronaldo, the wand of a left foot of Wesley Sneijder and, of course, the current darlings of the international game, a flowing German side.

So far, though, none of those apparently A-list factors have been any way decisive.

Denmark may have well put Holland’s stars out of the tournament thanks to late blanket defending, blind luck and a goalscorer — in Michael Krohn-Dehli — who plays for Brondby.

Germany’s victory over Portugal, meanwhile, seemed to owe more to the overall flatness of the occasion than any of the exhilarating football they’ve become so famed for.

All of that, though, makes the dynamics of tonight quite interesting. Essentially, we’ve got two more clashes between celebrated individuals and more cohesive teams.

In one game, the Netherlands’ tactically broken team will look to get enough ball to Sneijder, Arjen Robben and Van Persie in order to overcome Germany’s lower-key but higher-quality unit. As against Spain in the World Cup final, though, those stars might have to get used to going for long periods without the ball.

Finally, in the other game, Denmark will look to reprise the two qualifying performances that saw their more moderate side frustrate Ronaldo’s Portugal.

Indeed, within Group B, it’s the Real Madrid star who probably distills the issue even further.

Ironically, his performances in international tournaments have been completely out of synch with his general career.

As his talent has become more complete, his influence on the summer competitions has waned. His best competition was arguably his first, in Euro 2004, before he was in contention for the best young player in the tournament in the 2006 World Cup.

In 2008, he had a decent tournament, but nowhere near to his Manchester United best at the time. Finally, in 2010, as he began to break record after record in club football, he was almost completely ineffective for his country.

If Portugal are going to get out of this group, they’re going to need him. Likewise the Dutch with Sneijder, Van Persie and Robben.

But, in the context of this competition’s history, such surges may be the greatest anomaly of all.