| 08.06.2008 |
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| Once they'd got bored with kicking lumps out of each other last night, Portugal and Turkey actually put on a show worthy of the European Championships. To be more precise, Portugal showed the attacking, incisive flair which makes soccer such an exciting game to watch while Turkey did their best to keep up. In all fairness to the Turks, they could have lost by a lot more and for sporadic periods of the game made life very difficult for the Portuguese. But offensive, slick and skilful play won the day eventually over huff, puff and bluster. I don't know many soccer fans who would prefer to see a tactically astute and patient performance over a hell-for-leather "score more than we concede" kind of game. I know it all depends on what approach gives your team the win but in terms of entertainment for the neutral, I would much rather see two teams sent out on to the field with a goal fest in mind than opponents ready to cancel each other out with the hope of a snatched victory lurking in the mind of their cautious coaches. Portugal toiled for a good 50 minutes before eventually finding that flow and fluidity they seem built for. The reports coming out of Spain that Deco is a spent force looked laughably inaccurate last night. The little maestro looked the creative genius of old on many occassions. Supported by a cast of tricky wingers and ambitiously attack-minded defenders, Deco sprayed ball around the pitch to great effect, setting up chances at will Portugal's approach got me thinking. If I were to build a team which would be recklessly entertaining while standing a chance at actually winning a few games, who would feature from the stars on show this summer? After much deliberation, I came up with this:  Built with offense in mind, I make no claims that this would be a Euro 2008 winning team (even if they all shared the same nationality) even though I thought long and hard over many positions for many hours. Luca Toni may not be a forward who can strip anyone with his pace over more than a few yards but he wouldn't have to in this team. Andrei Arshavin would drive at the defense, supported by the fleet-footed wingers Robben and Ronaldo on either side. Toni would just have to get on the end of any final ball from this speedy triumverate. Should the opposition nullify the three-pronged support attack, Deco would be on hand to deliver balls behind the defense for any of the forwards to latch onto. Counter-attacks would be built from defense through pacy wing-backs Evra and Sergio Ramos, providing overlap possibilities for Robben and Ronaldo as the team surges forward. Knowing that Deco is not exactly the most enthusiastic tackler, I've stuck Gennaro Gattuso behind him to play as the holding midfielder. This team will at least have to make it look like they're willing to defend so Rino is backed up in central defense by the granite-like Carlos Puyol and the man-mountain that is Georgio Chielleni. The Italian is also a more-than-capable exponent of bringing the ball out of defense, which will also aid the swift counter-attacks. The Amies XI may leak a few goals and probably crash out somewhere around the quarter-finals but at least they will have entertained a lot of people. I wonder if we will be saying that about the Portuguese come June 29. |
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| 08.06.2008 |
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| Well then. It would be hard to conceive of a more crushing way to lose than Switzerland conjured up yesterday. Outplay opponent? Check. Give up fluke goal against run of play? Check. Have arguably reasonable penalty appeals denied? Check. Hit woodwork? Check. Lose captain and best player to injury? Big ugly black check. Ever since the Swiss, along with Austria, were named hosts of the tournament, an early exit for both has seemed on the cards. But I’ll be sorry if that happens, if only because folks here in Bern are trying so hard, in their sometimes timid Swiss way, to get into this whole football-fandom thing.  This is not to say that there’s a shortage of the hardcore, beer-swilling, slurred-word-fan-song-singers that every club or country needs to keep the coals of support well stoked. Switzerland has these, but more remarkable is the flood of new fans, especially women and folks who appear to be from immigrant backgrounds. I suppose this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, in that Switzerland has one of the highest non-native-born populations in Europe, but still it was interesting to see Muslim mothers in headscarves shopping for national team gear with their kids.  A similar thing happened in Germany two years ago, of course, though I chalked much of that up to the bandwagon effect. As much as Germans doubted their national team’s chances to go very far in that tournament before it opened (and did they ever), once they began beating the heady likes of Costa Rica and Poland, the old German self-confidence set in. Except this time, the country was ready to wave flags and paint their faces and celebrate not just the Nationalmannschaft’s dominance, but how nice it was simply to be German. And German identity suddenly had nothing to do with blood or ethnicity, and everything to do with being lucky enough to be hosting the world’s biggest party in your own backyard. Naturally, the Swiss organizers of Euro 2008 have sought to re-create as much of that feeling as possible. And yes, so have their corporate partners.  The fan zones here are the expected monstrosity of commercially-encouraged ‘good times’, where everything that can be plastic is plastic, where the beer is non-local and non-good, and there’s no way you’re finding a toilet that flushes. The one bright spot I could see was that the Carlsberg-Coke-pizza slice merchants were willing to let me pay with some of the Euros (otherwise worthless in Switzerland) that I had in my wallet.  As UEFA keeps such a tight rein on the use of its names and logos, local merchants are getting in the spirit with more neutral items. I saw perfume boutiques and women’s shoe stores with arrays of footballs and Swiss flags, and found the football sandwich meal deal at Migros Express so enchanting I had to buy one. If you don’t know Migros supermarket, all I can say is it’s about the most Swiss thing in the world. Simultaneously posh and stodgy, its larger locations have dizzying selections of gourmet everything, especially chocolate, as well as an admirable focus on cheap own-brand items. Don’t try to buy beer or smokes there though – the chain, run as a cooperative society with the public good in mind, refuses to sell them. (You will find plenty of Rivella, though, a surprisingly yummy, tangy soda flavored with whey.)  Did I mention how ugly the weather has been here? (You might have guessed from the awful light in my photos.) On Saturday the sky was pathetically gray, and the temperature can’t have gotten much higher than 15 degrees. More of the same is expected today, and without a Swiss game on, I can’t imagine nearly as many folks will make it out to the fan zones. In truth though, the biggest crowd that’s come out yet was not to watch football, and appeared on the day with the worst weather of all – Friday, a day on which rained more or less all day long, and late into the evening. About 25,000 people packed Waisenhausplatz and Bundesplatz to see the mega-bands Patent Ochsner and Züri West.  What? You don’t know these bands? Or their hits like 'Fingt ds Glück eim?' and 'W. Nuss vo Bümpliz'? Well then you would have been feeling just about as lonely as I was on Friday, seemingly the only one who wasn’t singing along with all the songs. I got all excited when Züri West began playing Prince’s ‘When You Were Mine’ at the end of their set, thinking I could finally jump in for a verse or two, but it turned out to be singer Kuno Lauener's handy Bernese German version…sigh. |
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